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RUDOLF EUCKEN: 
HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE 



WORKS BY RUDOLF EUCKEN 



THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN LIFE. As 

Viewed by the Great Thinkers from 
Plato to the Present Time. Translated 
by Professor Boyce Gibson and Professor 
Hough. Demy 8vo. 

MAIN CURRENTS OF MODERN THOUGHT. 

Translated by Meyrick Booth. Demy 8vo. 






RUDOLF EUCKEN: 

HIS PHILOSOPHY AND 
INFLUENCE 



BY 

MEYRICK BOOTH, B.Sc, Ph.D. (Jena) 



NEW YORK: 

CHAS. SCRIBNER'S SONS, 

597-599 FIFTH AVENUE. 



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All rights reserved. 



PREFACE 

This little book is an attempt to provide a 
popular account of a philosophy which is 
playing a leading part in shaping the thought 
and life of the modern world. It has been my 
endeavour to avoid technical philosophical 
language, and to treat the subject throughout 
in such a fashion as to appeal to those who 
have made no special study of philosophy or 
theology. 

Professor Eucken has no dearer wish than 
that philosophy should cease to be a mere 
academic speciality and become a power in the 
life of the people ; and he seeks, in particular, 
to interest all those men and women who are 
growing tired of mere negation and agnos- 
ticism. I feel, therefore, that my imperfect 
attempt to interpret his comprehensive work 
of construction perhaps needs no apology. 
For Eucken has done much — more perhaps 
than any other living man — to render possible 
to modern people a belief in the reality and 
supremacy of the spiritual world. And what 
he finally seeks is nothing less than the 
reconstruction of our entire life and civilisa- 
tion upon a positive spiritual basis. 

As one who attended Professor Eucken's 



vi PREFACE 

lectures for more than two years, it gives me 
peculiar pleasure to assist in the task of spread- 
ing his convictions throughout the English- 
speaking world, in which his teaching has 
already met with such a favourable reception. 

The early portion of this study (Chapters I. 
to V.) is concerned with an explanation of the 
main principles of Eucken's thought. The 
latter section (Chapters VI. to XII.) seeks to 
bring his philosophy into contact with some 
of the central problems of modern life and 
thought. In the second part the treatment is 
necessarily, to some extent, independent ; but 
I have kept closely to the lines laid down in 
Eucken's works. 

The reader will see that four of the longest 
chapters have been devoted to the social side 
of Eucken's philosophy (including one on 
Education). In assigning so much space to 
this topic the present work has, I hope, done 
something to justify its existence ; for this 
most important aspect of his philosophy has 
been singularly neglected in this country. 

Eucken's theological views are already well 
known to English readers ; and this must be 
my excuse for having left only one chapter 
for their discussion. 

MEYRICK BOOTH. 

. Letchworth, 
August, 1913. 



CONTENTS 





INTRODUCTORY HISTORICAL SKETCH . 


XI 


I. 


LIFE AND WORKS .... 


I 


II, 


NATURALISM 


9 


III. 


WHAT IS MAN ? . . . . 


. 19 


IV. 


THE SPIRITUAL LIFE .... 


. 25 


V. 


MAN AND THE SPIRITUAL LIFE . 


• 45 


VI. 


SPIRIT AND MATTER .... 


. 53 


VII. 


THE PLACE OF THE INTELLECT . 


. 74 


VIII. 


CIVILISATION 


. 89 


IX. 


SOCIALISM 


, 120 


X. 


INDIVIDUALISM .... 


• 149 


XI. 


EDUCATION 


. 166 


XII. 


RELIGION 


. 183 




INDEX 


. 205 



SOME ABBREVIATIONS OF EUCKEN'S 
WORKS USED IN THE TEXT 

The Problem of Human 
Life . . . . = ThePfob,ofH,Life. 

The Meaning and Value 
of Life . . . . = The M, and V. of Life. 

Life's Basis and Life's 

Ideal . . , . = Life's Basis. 

Main Currents of Modern 

Thought . . . = Main Currents. 

Other titles are quoted in full. 



INTRODUCTORY HISTORICAL 
SKETCH 

In explaining the ideas of any philosopher 
it is in the highest degree essential that there 
should exist in the reader's mind a suitable 
background against which the teaching in 
question may stand out in clear relief. For 
the sake, therefore, of those who have made 
no special study of the history of philosophy, 
it will be desirable to attempt a very brief 
historical outline leading up to Eucken's own 
position. In so doing I shall confine myself 
to that aspect of philosophy which is especially 
important to an understanding of Eucken's 
thought. It is thus hoped that this sketch 
may not be entirely useless even to those to 
whom any ordinary outline of the history of 
philosophy would be the merest repetition. 

The Problem of Nature and Spirit 

Rudolf Eucken's thought centres round 
the great and ancient problem of nature and 
spirit. Is nature (that is, the world of matter 



xii INTRODUCTORY HISTORICAL SKETCH 

seen in the light of science) the true basis of 
reaHty, of which spirit, if it be allowed to 
exist at all, is a bye-product ? Or is spirit the 
source and fundament of all reaUty, nature 
being ultimately dependent upon an invisible 
world ? This is the great alternative. 

In placing this decisive question in the centre 
of his whole work, Eucken at once puts him- 
self into the closest touch not only with the 
philosophical and scientific problems of to-day, 
but with all the great philosophies of the past. 
For the attitude which a thinker will adopt 
with regard to any given problem must be 
decisively influenced by his answer to this 
question. It will be immediately obvious, to 
take a few examples, that his views upon the 
nature of reality, the problem of knowledge, 
the relationship between mind and body, the 
freedom of the will, the nature of personality, 
the basis of ethics, the immortality of the 
soul, and the religious problem, will be 
radically affected by his belief or disbelief in 
the existence of a spiritual principle as the 
root of reality. 

There is abundance of evidence to show that 
from the very earliest times the problem of 
nature and spirit, in some form or another, has 
been a subject of intense human interest. In 



INTRODUCTORY HISTORICAL SKETCH xiii 

the primitive races, while it was commonly 
believed that soul and body were quite distinct 
and separable realities, no clear distinction 
was made between nature and spirit in the 
modern sense of the terms, because the soul 
was regarded as itself a more or less ponderable 
thing. There is room for controversy, how- 
ever, as to how far primitive man really 
regarded the soul in a material sense. 

The Early Greek Thinkers 

The history of European philosophy begins 
with the Greek physicists of the sixth century 
B.C., who were the first thinkers to attempt a 
systematic, rational explanation of the uni- 
verse. Their efforts tended in the direction 
of monism ; they fixed, in turn, upon various 
substances (such as water, air and fire) which 
they beheved to constitute the basis of reality, 
and the human soul, like the rest of the uni- 
verse, was classed as a manifestation of this 
basic substance. This monism tended some- 
times towards spiritualism and sometimes 
towards materialism. Heraclites, for example, 
gave philosophy a decidedly spiritual turn ; 
and his conception of fire as the basis of life 
reminds one very forcibly of Bergson's view of 
the elan vital. He it was who said : '' It is 



xiv INTRODUCTORY HISTORICAL SKETCH 

wise to hearken not to me, but to my word, 
and to confess that all things are one ''; " The 
one is made up of all things, and all things 
issue from the one "; and " All human laws are 
fed by the one divine law." 

Idealism and Materialism in Ancient Greece 

It was not long before Greek thought fell 
apart into two sharply opposed tendencies, 
corresponding, roughly, to materialism and 
idealism. On the one side Democritus and 
Protagoras gave to the Ionian philosophy a 
thoroughly materiaHstic turn, reducing the 
whole of life, including the human soul, to a 
system of moving atoms, and denying the 
possibility of immortality. On the other, 
Pythagoras, Empedocles and their followers 
laid peculiar stress upon the uniqueness and 
independence of the soul, and the existence of 
an invisible, spiritual realm. 

Plato 

This intensification of the problem helped to 
prepare the way for Plato, with his sharp 
separation of life into the material and 
spiritual planes. He performed a great work 
of synthesis by the construction of a philo- 
sophical system which included all the main 



INTRODUCTORY HISTORICAL SKETCH xv 

tendencies of early Greek thought and sought 
to render them mutually compatible. Plato 
placed the centre of reality in the spiritual 
world, which he conceived of as being an 
independent realm superior to the sensuous or 
merely phenomenal world, which is a change- 
ful and shadowy reflection of the eternal 
reality. The human soul belongs to the 
spiritual world as its true home, and dwells 
only temporarily in the lower world of 
phenomena. Upon the subject of Plato's 
view of the soul I may, with advantage, quote 
a few sentences from Professor McDougalFs 
Body and Mind (p. 19) : — 

"... his teaching as to the purely immaterial 
and immortal nature of the soul is clear enough. 
The soul of man, though it is in some sense derived 
from the world-soul, is not merely a ray of the 
universal energy, life, or mind, as it appears in the 
systems of the Ionian philosophers. It is a self- 
contained individual being, the ground of person- 
ality ; as such it exists in the realm of pure Being 
before incarnation ; from that realm it brings the 
knowledge of the ideas manifested in reminiscence ; 
and as such it endures through all the vicissitudes of 
its successive re-incarnations." 

Plato first clearly perceived and systema- 
tised that great truth of the existence of a 
spiritual world of absolute values, above and 



xvi INTRODUCTORY HISTORICAL SKETCH 

beyond all the imperfections of the human 
sphere, a world in which our earthly life first 
discovers its real meaning. He was influenced 
to a considerable extent by ethical considera- 
tions, and deeply felt that great need for a 
clear separation between the spiritual and the 
natural which has invariably been experienced 
by thinkers capable of fathoming the more 
profound needs of the soul ; for the desire for 
an unshakable spiritual reality which shall 
stand out clear above the apparent chaos of 
ordinary human conditions is ineradicably 
planted in the human spirit. However arbi- 
trary his system may appear to the reader of 
to-day, he set humanity a task which raised 
it above all materiaHsm, individuaHsm and 
subjectivity. 

Plato in relation to Eucken 

Eucken, like other ideaUstic philosophers, 
follows Plato in his insistence upon a realm of 
universal and absolute truth, towards which 
we must strive and in which we find our true 
being, in the stress laid upon the spiritual Hfe 
of the individual, and in the recognition of a 
sharp distinction between the spiritual and 
the natural spheres. The Greek thinker's 
intellectualism and transcendentalism find. 



INTRODUCTORY HISTORICAL SKETCH xvii 

however, no echo in the teaching of the Jena 
philosopher ; for the difficulty of bridging the 
gap between the superior spiritual world and 
the inferior sphere of phenomena left Plato's 
system branded with the sign of an abstract 
intellectualism, a defect which has clung, as 
we shall see, to his idealistic followers. In 
Plato we trace in cold, clear, simple outlines 
those central and abiding philosophical prob- 
lems which subsequently became so much 
deeper, wider and more complex. And, in 
particular, we have our attention fixed here, 
in peculiarly striking fashion,' upon that great 
antithesis of spirit and nature which runs 
through the whole history of religious and 
philosophical thought. 

Aristotle and his Followers 

Aristotle's abandonment of the Platonic 
world of independent spirituality did not have 
the hoped-for effect of creating a well-estab- 
lished unity, and in his devotion to the world 
of external reality Plato's great successor 
prepared the way for the fatal duaHsm which 
was to wreck Greek thought. The followers 
of Aristotle gradually lost their hold of any 
objective spiritual reality, with the result that 

R.E. b 



xviii INTRODUCTORY HISTORICAL SKETCH 

they fell back into various forms of subjec- 
tivism, such as Stoicism, Epicureanism and 
Scepticism, types of thought which could not 
long satisfy a people who had been accustomed 
in the past to a life in close touch with positive 
spiritual ideals. 

In Eucken's The Life of the Spirit (p. 210) 
we read : — 

" The whole course of Greek history presents us 
with the spectacle of the gradual retreat of the 
sensible world before the spiritual. In the beginning 
the sensible world took complete possession of man, 
but the craving after spiritual self-preservation 
drove him to the elaboration of a super-sensible 
world.'' 

Plotinus and the Problem of Spirit and Nature 

In its later stages Greek thought increasingly 
perceived the real centre of life to lie in the 
super-sensible world ; but, as we have already 
noted, there arose a great difficulty in relating 
the higher spiritual world to the natural world 
in which man is compelled to live and work, 
and this resulted in an impossible dualism. 
This difficulty was very vividly present to 
Plotinus (b. 205 A.D.) ; and his school (Neo- 
Platonism), which may be looked upon as a 
European form of Hinduism, represents an 



INTRODUCTORY HISTORICAL SKETCH xix 

attempt at its solution along mystical and 
ascetic lines, an endeavour to transcend the 
dualism through an absorption of the subject 
in a transcendental world. The contrast 
between spirit and nature is here carried to its 
greatest extent. Plotinus' system marks the 
logical completion of that process of retire- 
ment from the material world which went on, 
as Eucken says, through the whole of Greek 
history. He bade man seek satisfaction in a 
spiritual reality remote from all sensuous 
interests — here he would find the real centre 
of his life, and not in that lower world which 
the Neo-Platonists looked upon as a shadowy 
emanation of the transcendent Being. Per- 
haps the most valuable element in Plotinus' 
thought is his deep and inspiring conception of 
the human soul. Although dwelling on a 
lower plane of existence, man was able, he 
declared, to enter into direct mystic unity 
with the Divine reality, and indeed his chief 
task was to liberate himself from all earthly 
ties in order to attain to this transcendent 
unity, A powerful impetus towards asceti- 
cism and self-purification thus flowed from the 
Neo-Platonic school. Man's highest goal was 
to lose himself in an ecstatic contemplation of 
the universal reality. That such a tendency 



XX INTRODUCTORY HISTORICAL SKETCH 

— though containing elements of immense 
value which were essential to the development 
of the race — is open to many grave objections 
must at once be clear. In such a devotion to 
a vague cosmic unity, devoid of all specific 
attributes, the individual necessarily withdrew 
himself from the life of this world and ceased 
to exert any influence upon it, whether for 
good or evil. Moreover, in its divorce from 
every sort of tangible reality and in the 
abandonment of the idea of positive love, the 
inner life itself necessarily underwent a lament- 
able impoverishment. The concepts of God 
and of human personality were in the last 
degree negative, and were obviously incapable 
of giving rise to any positive activities. 

Christianity 

While Greek thought was thus turning to a 
species of sterile mysticism (carefully to be 
distinguished from Christian mysticism), which 
was virtually equivalent to a surrender of the 
task of life on this earth, there was arising in 
Europe, in the form of Christianity, the 
greatest spiritual force that the world has 
ever seen, a force destined speedily to swallow 
up the pale, white flame of Neo-Platonism in a 
glowing fire of triumphant faith and love. The 



INTRODUCTORY HISTORICAL SKETCH xxi 

Greek world had, finally, failed in the central 
task of philosophy and Hfe, namely, the recon- 
cUiation of nature and spirit. It had left the 
gap unbridged. 

ChrisUanity and the Problem of Nature 
and Spirit 

An entirely new turn was given to the 
whole situation through the ascent of Chris- 
tianity. Plotinus had taught that man 
must leave the world in order to find God. 
But the significance of Christianity lay 
in the doctrine that God had descended 
to earth to seek and save man. Neo- 
Platonism called upon man to raise himself 
towards God ; while the new rehgion pro- 
claimed the stooping of the Divine towards 
the human in an act of redemptive love. 
The former led to a melting-away of the 
human in the Di\dne ; the latter to a per- 
meation of the human by the Di\ine. His- 
torical Christianity bridged the gap between 
nature and spirit by its teaching of the incarna- 
tion of the Perfect Spirit in the world of 
nature. The great antithesis now gave way to 
an at-one-ment. The whole of human exist- 
ence now acquired a new meaning and value : 
'' Christianity for the first time reveals a 



xxii INTRODUCTORY HISTORICAL SKETCH 



complete knowledge of Divine Being 
deification of man '' (Eucken). 



G > 



St. Augustine 

In the philosophy of St. Augustine (who has 
exerted no little influence upon Eucken) we 
see abundant evidence of the great spiritual 
deepening and of the new valuation of 
humanity which Christianity brought into 
human life. Augustine placed the human 
soul in the centre of his system, and devoted 
himself whole-heartedly to the development of 
the individual in the deepest sense of the 
phrase ; he thus raised philosophy above the 
cold intellectualism of the Grecian schools and 
made it intensely real and personal : — 

'' Happiness, blessedness, this it is upon which the 
whole thought and passionate longing of the man are 
concentrated — happiness, not in the restricted sense 
of the earlier Latin fathers, but as the complete 
satisfaction of the inner nature, as the vivifying of 
all the powers, as blessedness extending to the 
deepest foundations of being.*' {The Prob. of H. 
Life, p. 211,) 

From the point of view of our problem no 
further developments of great importance 
took place until the Modern Era, which opened 



INTRODUCTORY HISTORICAL SKETCH xxiii 

with the Renaissance, the Reformation and 
the revival of scientific studies; 

The Modern World 

The central fact of the new period was the 
breaking away of the individual from the 
authority of the mediaeval, ecclesiastical sys- 
tem. This emancipation showed itself in two 
main directions. In the first place it took a 
religious form in the Reformation, which was 
a demand for a more intimate and personal 
relationship between the individual and God, 
and a reaction against the rigidity of the 
papal organisation. As Eucken expresses it : 
'' a passionate longing arose for immediate 
access to God, a burning thirst for a saving 
miracle of infinite love and grace '' {The Prob. 
of H. Life, p. 275) ; and this produced a new, 
more personal and more human type of life. 
We read further, on p. 277 : '' The chief 
characteristic of the new Hfe is freedom, so 
that Melancthon could say in so many words, 
' In the end freedom is Christianity ' ; free- 
dom not as a natural property, but as a 
favour and gift of God ; freedom not of the 
man in himself, but of the Christian man.'' 
The second manifestation of the new spirit is 
the general movement of modern European 



xxiv INTRODUCTORY HISTORICAL SKETCH 

civilisation, as seen, for example, in the 
doctrine of the rights of man, in the develop- 
ment of free-thought, and in the ever-growing 
demand for the emancipation of the individual. 
Modern industrialism (more especially in its 
earlier phases) is one of the least desirable 
aspects of the same general tendency, exhibit- 
ing, as it does, individual liberty carried to 
the point of brutal egoism. 

With the development of the new era along 
more independent Hues, the old problem of 
nature and spirit, which was more or less in 
abeyance as long as the mediaeval system 
sufficed to satisfy men's minds, again forced 
its way to the front. And in its new form the 
problem gained immensely in depth and 
complexity. 

Spinoza 

Spinoza sought to raise man above the level 
of mere nature by basing his life upon reason, 
which he regarded as the universal spiritual 
reality ; and he developed an intellectuaUstic 
system, with Neo-Platonic affinities, in which 
salvation is to be awaited from pure knowledge, 
a system resting upon a belief in the entire 
rationality of existence and in man's capacity 
to live in complete harmony with the rational 
principle. 



INTRODUCTORY HISTORICAL SKETCH xxv 

Kant 

Kant pursued an opposite path. He held 
that reason was concerned with the natural 
world only, and that it could in no wise cross 
the gulf between nature and spirit ; the 
universals which it seems to give us, and upon 
which Spinoza leant, being true only for uSy as 
representing our method of viewing reality, 
and possessing no real objective validity. 
But, he explained, man is not only a thinker, 
he is also a doer \ he is moral as well as in- 
tellectual. And it is as a moral being that he 
is able to apprehend a genuine spiritual reality. 
Kant stands, therefore, for moral action as the 
method by which the antithesis of nature and 
spirit may be overcome. Eucken has many 
points of contact with Kant, and, on the other 
hand, few with Spinoza. 

Fichte, Schelling and Hegel 

Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, in spite of much 
that divided them, stood, in the main, for the 
same conception of the problem with which 
we are more immediately concerned. All 
three looked upon the ultimate reality as an 
expanding or evolving spiritual life, progressing 
according to its own inherent laws. We note 

R.E. c 



xxvi INTRODUCTORY HISTORICAL SKETCH 

(and this is most important) that the concept 
of reality has now lost the rigid and static 
form which it possessed in the antique world. 
The basis of existence has now become a self- 
subsist ent thought-process, developing through 
the interplay of opposites ; although objec- 
tive, this process works within the human soul- 
life. Hegel placed the idea of an independent, 
self-developing thought in the very centre of 
his system, which thus acquired what Eucken 
regards as an excessively formal, intellectual- 
istic and impersonal character. We shall see, 
however, that in many very important respects 
our philosopher is subject to Hegelian in- 
fluences — for example, in his view of spiritual 
life as a force ever striving towards expansion 
and growing through antitheses. 

The Trend towards Materialism 

During the nineteenth century men were 
occupied to a much greater degree than had 
ever before been the case with the things of 
the material world. Wonderful advances were 
made in technical science ; steam and elec- 
tricity revolutionised life ; the human race 
threw itself with immense ardour into the 
betterment of the external conditions of life ; 
the democratic upheaval and the rise of 



INTRODUCTORY HISTORICAL SKETCH xxvii 

socialism were signs of the times. Along with 
all this there went an undue absorption of man 
in the world of nature, a forgetfulness of his 
inner life often carried to the point of a deter- 
mined attempt to reject the whole idea of 
the soul and of any spiritual reality, as being 
entirely fictitious. This so-called realistic 
tendency, which is still immensely influential 
throughout the Western world, aims at a con- 
struction of life exactly opposed to Neo- 
Platonism. Plotinus called man to a Hfe 
entirely divorced from nature. Realism would 
place him wholly in nature. 

Spirit and Nature in the Modern World 

Just as the Ancient World closed with a 
denial of nature, so the Modern World has been 
led to a rejection of spirit. But neither of 
these two solutions is capable of truly satis- 
fying humanity. Thus — with an important 
difference — we again find ourselves confronted 
with the identical problem of the reconciHa- 
tion of nature and spirit with which we were 
dealing at the outset of this historical sketch. 
The difference consists in the enormous 
deepening which has taken place upon both 
levels : our conception of nature has been 
enriched beyond measure by the discoveries 



xxviii INTRODUCTORY HISTORICAL SKETCH 

of science ; while the developments of religion 
and philosophy throughout the centuries have 
opened up to us an incomparably wider view 
of the spiritual world than was visible to the 
ancients. 

Note. 
Historical Influences in Eucken's Thought. 

The Hibbert Journal for April, 1912, contained an 
article in which Baron v. Hiigel gave an account 
of the historical influences which have been of 
importance in the formation of Eucken's thought. 
In the ancient world he mentions Plato, Aristotle and 
Plotinus ; and in the modern world, Kant, Fichte 
and Hegel ; but most decisive of all is the Christian 
influence,- derived mainly from the Gospels, St. Paul 
and St. Augustine. Of considerable significance is 
Eucken's rejection of ethical monism (Leibniz and 
Spinoza) and his inclination towards a dualistic con- 
ception of ethics, as evidenced by his enthusiasm for 
Plato, St. Paul, St. Augustine and Kant. Modern 
thinkers related to Eucken are Windelband, Troltsch, 
Siebeck, Boutroux, Royce, and Pringle-Pattison. 



RUDOLF EUCKEN: 

HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE 



CHAPTER I 

LIFE AND WORKS 

Eucken's Boyhood 

Rudolf Eucken comes of the Frisian stock, 
a branch of the German people closely related 
to the English, and long noted for their free- 
dom-loving instincts ; and his racial origin no 
doubt has its bearing upon the practical and 
ethical character of his philosophy. He was 
bom at Aurich, a small country town in the 
extreme north-west corner of Germany, on 
January 5th, 1846. His father died when he 
was very young, and, in common with so many 
other noted men, he owes a great deal to his 
mother, a woman of exceptional mental and 
emotional qualities, who, in the face of con- 
siderable difficulties; enabled her son to obtain 



2 RUDOLF EUCKEN: 

the advantages of a prolonged education. 
The boy attended a good school in his native 
town, and while there was influenced to a 
most important extent by Wilhelm Renter, a 
deeply religious thinker and a pupil of the 
philosopher Krause. Eucken has himself said 
of Renter, that he was a man with '' such 
force of personal conviction that he left on 
every spiritually sensitive nature an inefface- 
able impression/' While still very young, 
and even before he came under Renter's 
influence, Eucken was warmly interested in 
the problems of religion and philosophy. As 
he grew older his interest deepened, and before 
he left school he had read very considerably 
along these lines. 

Student Days 

On proceeding to the University of Gottin- 
gen, he devoted himself for the most part, 
however, to classical philosophy and ancient 
history, although he found time to attend 
the philosophical lectures of Lotze, with whom 
he did not feel himself in sympathy. Before 
taking his degree at Gottingen, he went to 
study for a time at Berlin. Here he came into 
contact with Trendelenburg, who was at that 
time a great power in the philosophical world, 



HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE 3 

and to the famous Aristotelian Eucken owes 
much of his interest in Grecian thought and of 
his lifelong determination to keep philosophy 
in close touch with history and with social 
and moral questions. 

Academic Work 

After working as a High School teacher for 
five years, Eucken was appointed, in 1871, 
Professor of Philosophy at the University of 
Basel. Three years later he received a call 
to a similar position at Jena, and from 1874 
down to the present day he has remained 
loyal to the beautiful and historic little town 
by the Saale, notwithstanding temptations to 
transfer his influence to other and larger 
universities. For many generations Jena has 
occupied a unique position amongst German 
towns in consequence of its associations with 
literature and philosophy, and there is some- 
thing peculiarly suitable in the town which is 
inseparably connected in history with the 
names of Goethe, Schiller, Fichte, Hegel and 
Schelling, having been for so long the home of 
Germany's most celebrated living thinker, a 
man who has laboured all his life to conserve, 
to strengthen and to develop the principles 
of German idealism. Here Eucken has 

B 2 



4 RUDOLF EUCKEN : 

lectured for thirty-eight years ; and here he 
has written all his more important works. 

Eucken's Writings 

It was as a student of Aristotle that our 
philosopher first came before the public, with 
two pamphlets published in 1870 ; while his 
inaugural address at Basel dealt with the 
significance of Aristotle's thought for the life 
of to-day, and was followed, in 1872, by a 
work upon the Aristotelian method. After 
taking up his residence at Jena, Eucken 
directed his attention more towards the 
history of philosophy in general, publishing a 
history of philosophical terminology, a number 
of essays on the early German philosophers, 
and, in 1878, the work called Die Grundbegriffe 
der Gegenwart, which was subsequently so 
much altered in character and extended in 
scope that it became a new book, and in its 
most recent form was translated into English 
by the author of the present study, under the 
title of Main Currents of Modern Thought : 
as originally conceived, this was a historical 
work, but when re-written it took on the 
form of an introduction to Eucken's own 
position, linking up his teaching with the 
development of philosophy throughout the 



HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE 5 

ages. In 1888 there appeared the first of the 
great constructive works : Die Einheit des 
Geisteslebens in Bewusstsein und Tat der 
Menschheit — '' The Unity of the Spiritual Life 
in the Consciousness and Action of Mankind " 
— (which was, however, preceded, in 1885, by 
an important httle introduction called Pro- 
legomena zu Forschungen Uher die Einheit des 
Geisteslebens in Bewusstsein und Tat der 
Menschheit) . In this fundamental work, which 
has not yet appeared in English (though much 
of its content is brought into the later books), 
Eucken criticises, at great length, naturalism 
and intellectualism, rejects both, on the 
ground of their neglect of personality, and 
then proceeds, in systematic fashion, to lay 
the foundations of his own personal idealism. 
This was succeeded, two years later, by his 
most popular book. The Problem of Human 
Life (translated by Professor Boyce Gibson 
and Professor Hough), which deals in an 
extraordinarily sympathetic and illuminating 
fashion with the great philosophers of history 
and the value of their teaching for our modern 
life ; there have been nine German editions. 
This work reveals the close connection which 
Eucken establishes between philosophy and 
life, and, while not directly constructive, it 



6 RUDOLF EUCKEN: 

enables us to understand the influences which 
have helped to mould our philosopher's mind. 
It marks the end of his historical period. A 
new and more complete expression of Eucken's 
own convictions appeared in Der Kampf um 
einen geistigen Lebensinhalt (1896). Eucken 
was now devoting himself more to the con- 
sideration of religious questions, with the 
result that in igoi he published a lengthy 
exposition of his religious philosophy — The 
Truth of Religion (third improved edition, 
1912, translated by Dr. Tudor Jones). This 
was followed, in 1907, by a somewhat more 
popular account than had hitherto appeared 
of Eucken's own philosophical teaching, 
namely, the work which was published in 
England in 1911, with the title, Life's Basis 
and Life's Ideal (translated by Alban Wid- 
gery) ; and the same year produced a small 
book on the religious question : Christianity 
and the New Idealism (translated by Professor 
and Mrs. Boyce Gibson). A very useful 
summary of Eucken's ideas is The Meaning 
and Value of Life (1908), and this was 
succeeded in the same year by The Life of the 
Spirit (translated by F. L. Pogson). Of 
importance for the study of our philosopher's 
attitude towards Christianity is the short 



HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE 7 

Can We still he Christians ? (191 1, translated 
by Mrs. Boyce Gibson). The two most recent 
works are Knowledge and Life (translated by 
Dr. Tudor Jones) and The Theory of Know- 
ledge, the former being preparatory to the 
latter (which has not as yet been published in 
English) . There are also a number of interest- 
ing pamphlets, lectures and articles. A selec- 
tion of the more important of these will be 
published shortly in English (edited and trans- 
lated by the author of this study). 

Eucken's Personality 

No account of Eucken's thought would be 
complete which contained no mention of his 
personality. The union of philosophy with 
practical life is one of his central aims, and, 
true to his conviction, Eucken reveals in his 
own personality the unflagging effort, the 
thoroughness, the spiritually directed and 
inspired activity, the faith, and the deep 
intuitive sympathy which are the proper fruits 
of a philosophy such as his. The great Jena 
thinker has been endowed by nature with 
faculties which peculiarly fit him for the task 
which he is performing ; a rare combination 
of intellectual depth and keenness with 
emotional insight and sensitive sympathy has 



8 RUDOLF EUCKEN 

made it possible for him to develop a philo- 
sophy which is scientific and logical, yet plastic 
and intuitional, a view of life which can satisfy 
the intellect without ignoring the experiences 
and needs of the heart and conscience. Pro- 
fessor Eucken has about him as little of the 
traditional German Stubengelehrter as can well 
be imagined. He is no dried-up pedant 
absorbed in his pet theories ; but a man 
intensely alive to the outer world and full of 
sympathetic understanding for all those, of 
every class and every nation, who come into 
contact with him. Most characteristic of him, 
as indeed of all the truly wise, is his remark- 
able and unaffected simplicity of mind and 
character, his deep reverence, and his sense of 
humility. Notwithstanding his many years 
of arduous intellectual labour, which have left 
his hair as white as snow, Eucken is still 
young in spirit ; and of all the many aspects 
of his personality perhaps the most delightful 
are his optimism and enthusiasm. 



CHAPTER II 

NATURALISM 

We may perhaps best commence our study 
of Rudolf Eucken's philosophy by explaining 
that he seeks, in the first place, to solve two 
fundamental problems with which the pre- 
ceding historical outline has already made us 
familiar. He enquires as to the existence of a 
fundamental spiritual reality, underlying all 
the changeful appearances of life as we see it, 
and he asks the question : What is the relation- 
ship between spirit and nature ? 

Modern Attempts to formulate a Philosophy 
Eucken's method is experiential rather than 
merely rational. He calls our attention to 
the fact that in the modern world we find 
ourselves face to face with various attempts 
to discover a unity, and to provide a syste- 
matic explanation of the whole of reality. Each 
of these starts at a certain point with a certain 
assumption, and upon this basis endeavours 
to effect a synthesis of the whole : thus 



10 RUDOLF EUCKEN: 

materialism takes the facts and laws of 
physical science as its basis, and thinks to 
include the entire universe within the frame- 
work they provide, while intellectualism takes 
its stand upon a belief in a universal reason 
immanent in man, and seeks to develop this 
until it shall include the whole of life and 
experience. Each of these would-be syntheses 
meets with a measure of success ; but at last 
there arrives a time when it comes into con- 
tact with portions of life which obstinately 
refuse to be squeezed into the system ; in 
other words, it is found that the basis of unity 
has not been sufficiently comprehensive. At 
the very outset Eucken reveals himself as an 
anti-intellectualist, for he maintains that it 
is not so much rational argument which 
secures the defeat of these partial attempts at 
unity, as the actual content of existence as 
we ourselves experience it. The great systems 
of speculative philosophy, for example, have 
failed to command general assent not so much 
on account of any logical imperfections, as 
because they have not been able to satisfy the 
demands of man's inner nature, and have thus 
failed to cover the whole of reality. Any 
philosophy which would offer man permanent 
satisfaction must do justice to the whole 



HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE ii 

length, breadth and depth of hfe, and must be 
able, without violence or distortion, to include 
the entire content of existence, as revealed 
not only by the physical sciences, but by art, 
morality, religion, and the whole inner life of 
man. 

Eucken's Attitude towards Naturalism 

With the purpose of obtaining a more 
definite conception of Eucken's thought, we 
will consider, more in detail, one of the most 
important of the now existent attempts at 
unification, namely naturalism. This mode 
of thought, which is at present struggling with 
the various idealistic and religious movements 
for predominance in modern civilisation, con- 
tends in the main that the world of the senses, 
as interpreted by the methods of physical 
science, is the only true basis of reality, that 
there is no spirit in the proper sense of the 
term (all psychic life being looked upon as 
a mere bye-product of physical forces), and 
that man is not essentially more than an 
exceptionally intelligent animal. The higher 
is thus made entirely dependent upon the 
lower. Under this system there can, of 
course, be no future hfe, no freedom of the 
will, no spiritual religion and no morahty 



12 RUDOLF EUCKEN : 

which goes beyond utiHtarianism. Being an 
attempt at a world-philosophy, naturalism 
endeavours to extend itself over the whole 
area of human life and activity : 

" The naturalistic type of life extends from the 
most general of impulses to every branch of activity, 
and forms every department of life in a distinctive 
fashion. Knowledge depends entirely upon experi- 
ence ; every speculative element must be excluded 
as a subjective illusion ; in all its branches, know- 
ledge is nothing else than a broadened natural science. 
Art may not pursue imaginary ideals ; it finds its 
single task in the faithful and pure reproduction of 
the natural environment. Social life and endeavour 
will develop, above all, natural powers, and will seek 
to adapt itself to the conditions given by nature, and 
rejecting all aims based upon mere imagination, it 
will care chiefly for the physical welfare of the whole, 
as the source of all power and of all success." Life's 
Basis, p. 28. 

The Syntagma defined 
It will be well to explain at this point that 
Eucken uses a special term — syntagma — for 
such an attempt to unify life upon a specific 
basis ; and he has defined the word in Die 
Einheit des Geisteslebens (p. 5) : 

'' By syntagmas we understand systems of life, 
consolidations of historical reality which com- 
prehend the multiplicity of existence within a specific 
framework, and from this standpoint impart a 



HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE 13 

characteristic form to all separate phenomena. A 
syntagma is essentially different from a ' tendency ' 
or ' movement/ for it sets out to provide an explana- 
tion of the whole content of life down to the last 
detail and does not rest satisfied with indicating 
certain paths or supplying an impulse in this or that 
direction ; as a complete system it endeavours to be 
all-sufficient and exclusive. It therefore leaves no 
one neutral, but compels him to take sides ' for ' or 
' against/ " 

As examples of syntagmas one might mention, 
in addition to naturalism, Greek philosophy, 
Buddhism, Mohammedanism, the philosophy 
of the Enlightenment, and Roman Catholic- 
ism. This concept plays an important role in 
Eucken's thought, and we shall return to it 
later in greater detail. 

The Advance of Naturalism in the Modern 
World 

It is, of course, obvious that in modern 
times many important factors have contri- 
buted towards the strengthening of the 
naturalistic system. Among others we may 
recall the enormous strides that have recently 
been made in all the physical sciences, the 
waning influence of the traditional religions, 
the general concentration of humanity during 



14 RUDOLF EUCKEN: 

the last century upon the external and 
material side of life, and the accompanying 
neglect of all the problems of man's inner life. 
These and many other factors have given 
naturalism such an appearance of simplicity 
and inevitability that its triumph over all 
religious and idealistic conceptions of life is 
widely taken for granted. 

Naturalism does not include the whole of 
Reality 

But the fact must not be lost sight of that 
naturalism claims to be a logical, scientific 
explanation of the universe, and that it is on 
this ground that we are asked to accept it and 
the conclusions which follow from it. Our 
first question must therefore be : Does this 
system of thought really provide such an 
explanation ? Now in Main Currents Eucken 
indicates two major reasons (not to mention 
minor ones) which compel him to answer this 
interrogation in the negative. In the first 
place, naturalism does not solve the problem 
of knowledge, either on its metaphysical or 
its psychological side ; it neither bridges the 
gap between subject and object, nor elucidates 
the mystery which surrounds the unity of 
consciousness. Secondly, this system fails to 



HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE 15 

do justice to the full content of life : while 
covering a certain aspect of reality, and that 
by no means the most important, it necessarily 
leaves out much that is absolutely essential — 
in particular it neglects many of the actual 
facts of man's inner life, as seen both in the 
individual and in history. On p. 235 of Main 
Currents, Eucken writes : 

" Passing on to the second main objection we find 
ourselves face to face with a problem which goes yet 
deeper down. It is the problem of the content of 
reality. Naturalism and monism agree in conceiving 
this content as something far less significant than it 
really is. They ignore what (to those of another 
opinion) is of primary importance — the life of the 
spirit. Their position being that all inner life is no 
more than an adjunct of nature, they are compelled 
to treat the psychical life as a mere process taking 
place within each separate individual. In pur- 
suance of this line of thought they lay stress upon 
the indefinable nature of the boundary between the 
animal and the human, and point out that what was 
formerly looked upon as a human heirloom has in 
reality slowly worked its way up by a historical 
process of evolution, and that even the civilised man 
remains to a very great extent under the power of 
natural instincts. We extend our full recognition 
to the foregoing and have no desire to diminish its 
importance. But it is not the whole. For the life 
of the human soul does not remain in a state of dis- 



i6 RUDOLF EUCKEN: 

integration and confinement to separate points, as 
does that of animals : it results in an integration and 
the formation of a common life, which in turn 
develops an immeasurable wealth of concrete fact, 
displaying essentially new features as compared with 
the merely natural world. History and society, in 
their distinctively human sense, would be impossible 
without this integration. In its absence, how could 
speech be employed to communicate thought and 
how could human culture have developed at all ? 
Upon this basis is built up a vast and com.plicated 
system of human activities, such as law, morality, 
art, and science. These separate activities have 
(like the whole) their own laws, problems, and experi- 
ence. They bring men face to face with difficult 
tasks ; they exercise an increasing attraction over 
him, and in return make him into something im- 
measurably greater than he was ; from being a mere 
fragment of nature he becomes more and more a 
spiritual being, and in this capacity he inwardly 
experiences the infinite, while as a moral personality 
he is gifted with the power of converting the world 
into personal action. Such a profound trans- 
formation as this necessarily reveals a new aspect of 
reality. It is clear that man has now entered upon 
a new stage in the progress of the world, the recog- 
nition of which must essentially enlarge and deepen 
his general conception of the whole. This is no mere 
theory. In the course of the historical and social 
development of man as we know it, reality has 
actually been thus unfolded and has worked itself 
into the institutions of life, forming a developing 
force which surrounds us with a thousand influences. 



HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE 17 

To bring this inner solidarity of human life to full 
recognition was the chief task of German speculative 
philosophy. It was conscious of having reached a 
far higher level than the Enlightenment, because it 
explained spiritual contents and values by reference 
to this solidarity and not, like the Enlightenment, 
by derivation from the mere individual. 

'' Naturalism, however, overlooks this rise of the 
spiritual life, this development of a specific stage of 
civilisation, this inner growth of man through the 
work of millenniums, and ignores the whole wealth 
of reality thus revealed. From the point of view 
of naturalism, all this is simply non-existent, or at 
any rate it receives no systematic appreciation. We 
are given a picture of the whole which disregards 
everything specifically human, everything spiritual 
and everything which imparts a content to life. 
This involves a terrible restriction and impoverish- 
ment of life. It signifies a rejection of the whole 
inner content of history and an abandonment of 
everything in which humanity seeks its greatness. 
Naturalism constructs and rounds off its conception 
of the cosmos without taking man into account — 
and then, with his distinguishing characteristics as 
far as possible eliminated, he is squeezed in as well 
as may be ! We speak of reaction when w^e see life 
being screwed back to some old stage of being 
already inwardly obsolete. Yet all such attempts 
to confine life to an outworn historical position are 
modest indeed compared with this attempt to chain 
life down to its prehistoric beginnings, and so deprive 
it of all chance of inner elevation and true develop- 
ment. When contemplated from this standpoint, 

R.E. C 



i8 RUDOLF EUCKEN 

the whole of human history, with all its charac- 
teristic features, is seen to be nothing but a colossal 
error, a complete departure from truth, since it has 
more and more deceived man by holding up to him 
an inner world which is in reality a mockery and a 
delusion/' 



CHAPTER III 

WHAT IS MAN ? 

Man is More than a Mere Fragment of Nature 
That man is to a large extent bound up 
with nature is a fact so obvious that it need 
not detain us. But Eucken, as we have seen, 
asks the question : Is there not in man some- 
thing which is more than a derivative of 
natural processes ? And he maintains, in 
answer, that, in the first place, the fact that 
man knows is evidence of the presence within 
him of a quantity transcending nature. For 
nature shows a juxtaposition and succession 
of events, and does not exhibit that power of 
rising above separate events, reviewing them, 
linking them together, and making of them a 
unified system of knowledge, which is peculiar 
to man ; Eucken, therefore, holds that even 
this most ordinary activity of human con- 
sciousness, not to mention man's higher 
faculties, signifies a transcendence of what 
the scientist understands by nature : '' there 
must be a unity of some kind ruling within us ; 
but the mechanism of nature can never pro- 

c 2 



20 RUDOLF EUCKEN: 

duce such a unity " (cf. p. 69). The demand 
for unity and logical order latent in man can- 
not be explained as a mere product of natural 
causes. The common statement, made from 
the standpoint of a mechanical theory of 
evolution, that man's inner life is a mere means 
for adapting him more perfectly to his environ- 
ment, cannot be accepted as an explanation ; 
for this purpose it would not, as a matter of 
fact, be in the least necessary. Is a man, with 
all his complex mental development, more in 
harmony with his environment than is an 
oyster ? 

The Fact of an Inner Life in Man 

When we pass on to the consideration of 
moral and spiritual values, of man's power 
not only to perceive life as it is, in systematic 
fashion, but to judge what life ought to he, we 
must realise that we are in contact with an 
actual fact which is absolutely incompatible 
with any naturalistic explanation of the 
universe. That very '' judgment of Ought " 
which is seen in the almost universal human 
dissatisfaction with the mere routine of self- 
preservation, a feeling unknown in the animal 
world, is in itself a proof that we carry within 
ourselves a " something " more than nature. 



HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE 21 

For how can nature sit in judgment upon 
nature ? And why should man alone, of all 
the innumerable forms of life, refuse to be 
content with the task of self-preservation ? 

" So far as man belongs to nature, his conduct is 
determined solely by the impulse to self-preservation ; 
every movement must either directly or indirectly 
tend to the welfare of the individual ; . . /' — Lifes 
Basis, p. 119. 

Now we all of us know that men can and do 
act in direct and conscious opposition to the 
instinct of personal self-preservation ; nay, 
what is more, they do so with a profound con- 
sciousness that their action constitutes the 
highest afhrmation and enrichment of their 
own lives ; in losing their lives they find them. 
The case of a Father Damien, who left 
behind him all the comforts of civilisation to 
give his life to the outcast lepers of the South 
Seas — people who from the standpoint of 
mere racial preservation would have been 
better left to die — is hard to explain upon a 
purely naturalistic hypothesis ! How indeed 
are we to account at all, in this fashion, for all 
those innumerable human actions which run 
directly counter to the law of nature ? A dog 
fights another dog over a bone or over the 
right to occupy a certain garden ; but men 



22 RUDOLF EUCKEN: 

die cheerfully by tens of thousands in the 
defence of moral and spiritual ideals which 
have not the remotest connection with any 
life-preserving instinct. Consider the case of 
the Crusades, when enormous masses of men 
deliberately abandoned everything to which 
nature bound them, and laid down their lives 
in the pursuit of a religious idea. Or to take 
an example more congenial to modern tastes : 
a missionary will go to a remote and dangerous 
country for no purpose other than the in- 
culcation of his views of spiritual truth. 
Must we not conclude from a consideration of 
the mere facts of human life, altogether apart 
from any metaphysical theory, that in man 
there is revealed a new and higher kind of life 
than that known upon the so-called natural 
level ? And in particular must we not recog- 
nise the reality and practical efficacy of values 
independent of nature's mechanism of utiUty, 
values in which man realises his own inner life? 

The Idea of Truth 

In the spheres of art, science, metaphysics, 
and morality, we find further important 
evidence of the uprising in man of a new, 
spiritual world. The idea of a positive and 
absolute truth, as sought by science and 



HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE 23 

metaphysics, is inexplicable as a mere utili- 
tarian product. In science with its univer- 
sality, and its vast network of rigid relation- 
ships, we see a system of super-individual 
truth which has come to birth within the 
human mind, acquiring for itself a real 
independence of man's subjective nature and 
constituting a stage of spiritual reahty.^ It 
is precisely in rising above the level of utility 
and self-preservation that our deepest hfe 
begins — the only life, in fact, which is any- 
thing more than an (in itself) absolutely 
meaningless routine of working, eating, sleep- 
ing, and racial propagation. 

'' In the development of a self-consciousness and 
of a movement of life itself, we rise above the motive 
of utility, by which nature is swayed. It is a moral 
element in the widest sense ; it is the consciousness 
of something objectively necessary, unconditionally 
transcending the ends of the narrowly human, that 
first gives to convictions axiomatic certainty and to 
conduct the right energy.'' — Lifes Basis, p. 129. 

Logic and Conscience 

Particularly interesting examples of this 
more than natural life in man are to be seen 

1 It is most important to remember that the term " spiritual," 
as employed by Eucken, includes intellectual, aesthetic and 
moral aspects of reality, and is by no pieans confined to the 
sphere of religion, 



24 RUDOLF EUCKEN 

in logic and conscience, which from Eucken's 
standpoint are lower and higher manifesta- 
tions of spiritual reality upon the natural level. 
The former forces us, with an absolutely 
irresistible compulsion, to conform our thought 
to fixed, super-individual norms, thus raising 
us, in an intellectual sense, above the stage of 
mere natural inclination ; the latter performs 
for us an identical service in the moral sphere ; 
and both mark the emergence within man of a 
world of real, independent and imperative 
values into which he must be reborn if he is to 
realise himself. 

The Great Question : What is Man ? 

The crux of the whole matter lies in the 
great question : What is man ? If he be no 
more than a mere fragment of nature, a link 
in a chain of mechanical processes ; if he be 
wholly absorbed in the utilitarian task of 
self-preservation ; then his existence is totally 
meaningless. If, on the other hand, man 
bears within him the possibility of participa- 
tion in a universal spiritual life, independent of 
the mechanism of the natural level, our con- 
ception of his being, his work and his destiny 
must be entirely revolutionised. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE SPIRITUAL LIFE 

The Spiritual Life a Fact 
It is thus clear that man perceives within 
himself evidence of a reality other than that 
of sense experience ; and we have agreed to 
call this reality spiritual life. The exact 
nature of this life, in its entirety, will no 
doubt remain beyond the scope of human 
concepts. But the term will serve to describe 
a phenomenon which we have perceived to 
exist as an actual fact of observation. How- 
ever difficult it may be of definition, the 
spiritual life, as Eucken interprets it, is no 
abstract concept, but a definite portion of 
human experience. It is deduced not from 
metaphysical speculation, but from the study 
of life itself, as seen in social existence, history, 
morality, science, art and religion. If this 
fact of the actuality of the spiritual life, of its 
continual operation in the world around us at 
this moment, be clearly grasped, the reader 
will be on the way to a proper understanding 



26 RUDOLF EUCKEN: 

of Eucken's thought. For the great Jena 
teacher is concerned above all things with life 
itself y and not with intellectual abstractions. 

The Negative and Positive Arguments 

In common with all fundamental proposi- 
tions (such as the statement that we ourselves 
exist !) the reality of the independent spiritual 
life is incapable of a direct, reasoned proof. 
The assumption of its reality can, however, be 
justified by the convergence of two lines of 
argument. One of these is negative and the 
other positive. In the first place it can be 
shown that every attempt to provide a 
rational explanation of life collapses, involved 
in contradictions, in the absence of this assump- 
tion — which is thus seen to be nothing less 
than a necessity of thought (see Main 
Currents). In the second place (and in addi- 
tion to the argument from man's nature, 
dealt with in the preceding section), Eucken 
makes it clear 

'' that the thoroughgoing recognition and explication 
of this axiom exercises an invasive and uplifting 
influence on life, that all life's manifold activities 
converge to this new starting-point, and, in so doing, 
for the first time become capable of a clear, con- 
nected, and complete development. The greater 
the variety of movements which converge to the 



HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE 27 

same point, the more sure can we be that we are not 
dealing with mere illusions/' — The M, and V. of 
Life, p. 84 ; and see the constructive works in 
general, such as Die Einheit des Geisteslebens, Lifers 
Basis, The Life of the Spirit, and The Truth of 
Religion, 

The Spiritual Life as a Unifying Force 

The first characteristics of this life are its 
universality, its imperativeness and its move- 
ment towards unity (as seen, for example, in 
such manifestations as man's moral sense or 
the laws of logic) . It is an original force which 
has been a whole from the beginning, and 
must not be conceived of as having been 
evolved or built up from natural elements. 
This trend towards unity, this ceaseless unify- 
ing activity which works within us whether 
we will or no, is not explicable as a mere 
summation or combination of isolated units, 
but is itself the creative and synthetic power 
which first makes the union of elements on the 
sense level intelligible. We must not picture 
unity as a product of multiplicity, but multi- 
plicity as an outgrowth of unity. Eucken 
reverses the method of empirical science, for 
he explains the lower through the higher, 
instead of attempting to deduce the higher 
from the lower. 



28 RUDOLF EUCKEN: 

The Spiritual Life the Centre of Reality 

The reader must think of the spiritual Hfe 
as a living, working, creating, self-active, vital 
energy, which, at its highest level, possesses the 
attribute of personality (see p. 191). Far 
from being explicable by any merely intellec- 
tual process, such a process can be valid only 
in so far as it is in harmony with this parent 
energy, which is as much the source of all 
truth as it is of the entire realm of nature. 
The spiritual life is not, as a materialistic 
science would assume, an annex of a reality 
other than itself, but is itself the very core of 
all reality. Here we find ourselves at the very 
centre of the universe, at a point where the 
whole of reality is self -immediate. Here the 
antithesis of nature and spirit is transcended, 
both being seen as aspects through the inter- 
action of which the whole realises itself. Here 
there exists a self-sufficient eternal life superior 
to space and time, and alone imparting mean- 
ing and value to all that occurs in that lower 
level of being which is confined within space 
and time. It is this invisible spiritual reality 
which '' sustains, dominates and unifies the 
visible world." Upon this reality man and 
nature are dependent, for it itself constitutes 



HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE 29 

the innermost essence of their being. In 
Eucken's own words, '' a spiritual Ufe tran- 
scending all human Hfe, forms the ultimate 
basis of reality/' and the recognition of this 
life is the first step towards all further know- 
ledge, and the first necessity of any adequate 
view of life as a whole : ''the corner stone of all 
philosophical thought and the axiom of axioms 
is the fact of a world- embracing spiritual life.'' 

There are Different Stages within the Spiritual 

Life 

Spiritual reality must not, however, be 
thought of as present in full perfection at 
every point of the universe. This would be 
an entire misinterpretation of Eucken's con- 
victions. It is true that all reality is ulti- 
mately spiritual, but at the same time exist- 
ence is redeemed from a '' dead-level " con- 
dition, in which all things are equally good and 
perfect, by the fact that spiritual life manifests 
itself in different stages of expression. And 
these stages are not in harmony with one 
another. While there is a constant upward 
movement towards spirituality and self- 
activity, a movement which is inherent in 
reality, the lower or natural stages, which 
have not yet attained to self-consciousness. 



30 RUDOLF EUCKEN: 

resist this elevation, and thus we get opposi- 
tion, tension and division. To overcome this 
opposition, active spiritual effort is demanded. 
It is most distinctive of Eucken's thought 
that the development of reality is not looked 
upon as a smooth, natural process taking 
place calmly, peacefully and inevitably — as is 
assumed by pantheistic thinkers — but, on the 
contrary, as a conflict, an actual struggle for 
supremacy between opposing forces, a battle, 
tending now in one direction, now in another, 
and the issue of which may long be in doubt. 
It is true that the upward movement cannot 
permanently be suppressed, but for long 
periods it may be held back by the opposing 
forces.^ 

1 Cf. Professor Boyce Gibson, Rudolf Eucken's Philosophy of 
Life, Chap. X., from which the following passages are taken : 
" No just conception of the meaning which Eucken attaches to 
this fundamental concept [i.e., of the spiritual life) can possibly 
be gained so long as we fail to bear in mind that the spiritual 
life, however deep and divine our conception of it may be, is 
not an oppositionless experience, but shares, qua personal, the 
Essential characteristic of all personal activity — that, namely, 
of developing dialectically through self-diremption and self- 
return. . . . Hence to conceive the spiritual life aright, we have 
not to abstract from its oppositional quality or conceive it as 
developing apart from the pain and the evil, the ignorance 
and the ugliness, which it resists. The oppositions which 
stimulate and perplex our mortality are themselves part of our 
immortal substance . . . [This life] is more than any of its 
oppositions. It cannot side with one pole against the other, 
since bipolarity is of its essence." 



HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE 31 

Man's Part in the Whole 

Now Eucken's philosophy pivots more 
especially about man's part in this scheme of 
things. Man is no mere passive spectator 
of this great world-process. He plays an 
essential r6le in the great drama. Situated, 
as we have seen, at the point where spirit 
and nature meet, and ever reaching out 
towards the spiritual reality which is at the 
centre of his being and yet which he can never 
wholly grasp, his position is full of doubt and 
complication. He is so far tied down to the 
sub-spiritual level of nature that he cannot 
realise his own inward reality without a 
reversal of his whole being, yet at the same 
time there dwells within him an upward- 
driving energy which entirely precludes the 
possibility of his remaining permanently con- 
tented upon the sub-spiritual level. It is 
true that the spiritual life is the very core of 
human personality. But it is not for that 
reason easy for man to attain to it ; for a man 
can face no task more difficult than the dis- 
covery and realisation of his own innermost 
self. Let him find and develop the indwelling 
spiritual reality, however, and he becomes a 
participator in a new world of cosmic activity, 



32 RUDOLF EUCKEN: 

a realm of super-individual truth and of 
absolute values. His life now acquires a 
totally new significance. The otherwise iso- 
lated individual man bases himself upon a 
soHd and unchanging foundation, and becomes 
independent of the ever-shifting world of 
appearances which is proper to the merely 
natural level of existence. 

Eucken's Philosophy defined as Activism 

In order to attain to this spiritual world (of 
which every human being is a potential 
member) man must fight a battle ; he must 
overcome the resistance of his non-spiritual 
nature, which acts as a constant downward 
drag. We cannot participate in the spiritual 
life without incessant and active effort ; hence 
the name — Activism — which Eucken has 
accepted as distinctive of his type of thought. 

The Spiritual Life more than Intellect, or any 
Human Faculty 

This absolute spiritual life which is thus 
immanent in man must not be identified with 
any partial aspect of human mentality, such 
as intellect or will. Spiritual reality requires 
for its development all human faculties, which 
find their only true function in subserving this 



HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE 33 

development, but it must not itself be com- 
pared with any faculty which has been evolved 
by humanity in the natural realm. That 
which the whole may need for its own self- 
realisation must not be identified with the 
original whole ; the qualities of the human 
subject are agents of the spiritual life, but 
they have no real meaning except as parts of 
an inclusive reality. 

'' This whole develops itself through the agency 
of the antithesis of subject and object, of power and 
resistance, but it remains superior to it, and holds 
both sides together even while they are divided/' — 
Main Currents, p. 58. 

This corresponds with the general character 
of Eucken's thought, with the idea of a 
development through antithesis, active effort 
and conflict, rather than through any quiet 
and regular growth, or through any merely 
intellectual process.^ 

The Problem of Truth 

Eucken's view of truth is in harmony with 
the general principles of Activism. Truth is 

^ The following passage from Main Currents, p. 153, is most 
important and characteristic : " That which our labour does 
bring us, however, does not come as the result of reflection, but 
of pursuing chosen paths to the end. Both our abiUty and our 
limitation are revealed to us only through the developments 
and experiences of life itself. It is more especially true that 

R.E, D 



34 RUDOLF EUCKEN: 

not a given reality needing merely to undergo 
intellectual assimilation. It is not capable of 
being grasped at any one moment as a com- 
plete possession. For truth lies in the spiri- 
tual life, and this, as we know, can never be 
wholly appropriated by man. Truth is a 
reality towards which he is ever striving, but 
which never falls entirely within his grasp : — 

" The truth that never can be proved 
Until we close with all we loved, 
And all we flow from, soul in soul." 

Our progress towards truth is an ascent. The 
truth itself, as conceived by Eucken, is, how- 
ever, in no sense subjective or pragmatic ; it 
is absolute and unchanging ; man's relation- 
ship to it is, however, necessarily uncertain 
and progressive. Man may be said to attain 
to truth in so far as he enters into the self- 
active spiritual life ; and from this point of 
view the problem of truth is the problem of 
self-realisation. In striving towards truth 
we approach the unity of existence. Thought 
alone cannot enable us to realise truth, for 
this realisation is more a question of spiritual 
power than of intellectual acuteness. '' All 

it is through struggle alone that our life fathoms its full depth; 
Resistance alone drives it to put forth its whole strength and 
compels it to exercise its full originative power/' 



HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE 35 

real knowledge involves a spiritual creation, 
an advance, and a self-formation of life as a 
whole." The test of truth is not conformity 
with any intellectual scheme, after the fashion 
of the old metaphysics, but the capacity to 
elevate life, to effect new syntheses, to over- 
come the oppositions of the lower level of 
reality. 

Eucken rejects Pragmatism 

At the same time, his view of the spiritual 
life holds Eucken well away from pragmatism 
and all allied movements, to which at this point 
it might easily appear that he was tending. 
He utterly rejects every philosophy which 
would in any sense whatever conduce to the 
viewing of truth as a means : — 

'* The essence of the conception of truth, and the 
life and soul of our search after truth, is to be found 
in the idea that in truth man attains to something 
superior to all his own opinions and inclinations, 
something that possesses a validity completely 
independent of any human consent ; the hope of an 
essentially new life is thus held out to man, a vision 
of a wider and richer being, an inner communion 
with reality, a liberation from all that is merely 
human. On the other hand, when the good of the 
individual and of humanity becomes the highest 
aim and the guiding principle, truth sinks to the 

D 2 



36 RUDOLF EUCKEN: 

level of a merely utilitarian opinion. This is 
destructive of inner life. All the power of con- 
viction that truth can possess must disappear the 
moment it is seen to be a mere means. Truth can 
exist only as an end in itself, ' Instrumental ' truth 
is no truth at all.'' — Main Currents, p. 78. 

The driving power of the movement towards 
truth is found not in rational thought, but 
in the instinct of spiritual self-preservation, 
which is rooted in the immanent spiritual 
life :— 

" In the discussion of questions of principle, each 
disputant is, at the bottom, defending himself and 
his own inherent character. It is from such spiritual 
self-preservation that power, warmth and passion 
first stream into the intellectual movement.'' — Main 
Currents, p. 90. 

The Need of the Age for a Positive Basis 

It is Eucken's profound conviction that the 
life of to-day needs, above all things, a secure 
positive basis. But this basis cannot be 
found in human life as we see it, in the multi- 
plicity of appearances and partial truths by 
which we are surrounded. There is therefore 
a necessity for metaphysics. We must press 
forward to the world of unity which lies 
behind the phenomenal world. Any system of 
thought, such as pragmatism, intellectualism 



HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE 37 

or voluntaryism, which bases itself upon a 
point within the world as it is given, will 
inevitably fail to embrace the whole, to effect 
a real unification ; these systems will always 
meet, sooner or later, with portions of reality 
which they have left out of account, and thus 
their inadequacy as complete philosophies of 
life will become apparent ; they will be 
refuted, not by argument, but by the exposure 
of their own inherent Hmitations. But a 
philosophy which, rejecting the world of first 
appearances, bases itself from the very outset 
upon the ultimate reality which is the author 
of all separate phenomena, will be in no such 
danger. It will be associated with no parti- 
cular phase of multiplicity, but only with the 
unity which lies behind all multiplicity. It is 
true that man cannot straightway grasp this 
unity ; but it is the true function of philosophy 
constantly to keep it before us as the goal 
towards which humanity should unceasingly 
progress. 

The Spiritual Life only imperfectly expressed 
in the World 

Throughout the whole of history, and in the 
life which surrounds us at the present day, we 
see numbers of attempts on the part of man 



38 RUDOLF EUCKEN: 

to develop spiritual life within the human 
sphere. Different religions, different systems 
of philosophy and morality spring out of 
man's restless desire to give concrete form 
to the creative and synthetic energy which 
ever pulsates within him, seeking modes of 
self-expression. These constructions of reality, 
these attempts at synthesis, come into conflict 
with one another, discover their limitations, 
re-mould themselves, or die and give way to 
others ; thus there is an advance of life and a 
deepening of reality in the midst of the chaos 
of opinions. Man is so made that he 
continually strives towards a more and more 
complete comprehension of reality : — 

" God's gift was that man should conceive of truth 
And yearn to gain, catching at mistake, 
As midway help, till he reach fact indeed." 

These complexes or concentrations of 
spiritual life derive their value not from their 
connection with humanity, but from what they 
perform for the more perfect expression of the 
spiritual life. Religion, knowledge, morality 
and so forth take on a new aspect when 
regarded from this standpoint : — 

*' The value and the truth of a particular religion 
will be judged in the first place by the nature of the 
spiritual substance that it offers, and the degree in 



HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE 39 

which, in its advance, it is able to join itself to the 
movement of life as a whole and to guide it further/' 
— Life's Basis, p. 158. 

This method of estimation — which will be 
further elucidated as this work proceeds — is 
applied by Eucken to whole historical epochs, 
to peoples and civilisations, and to individuals. 

An Attempt to illustrate the Spiritual Life by 
an Analogy 

It is by no means easy for those who are not 
thoroughly famihar with Eucken's thought to 
form a clear conception of the spiritual life as 
he understands it. As is usually the case with 
great thinkers, his concepts are capable of 
being interpreted in somewhat varying fashion 
according to the individual peculiarities of his 
readers. The following paragraph has been 
written with the purpose of conveying to the 
reader's mind, however imperfectly, some con- 
crete impression of the spiritual life as it has 
presented itself to my own mind — a task upon 
which I dare not embark without first safe- 
guarding myself by pointing out that all 
attempts to elucidate philosophical ideas by 
means of analogy are necessarily imperfect 
and are apt to become dangerous if pushed 
beyond the point intended. 



40 RUDOLF EUCKEN: 

Let us consider the spectacle presented by 
a modern army in the field as it appears to an 
entirely ignorant observer, knowing nothing 
of the methods of modern warfare. It is no 
more than a heterogeneous assemblage of men, 
guns, horses, waggons, telephone installations, 
heliographs, aeroplanes, balloons, field hos- 
pitals, portable bridges and so forth, scattered 
more or less loosely over an area of perhaps 
a hundred square miles. Thus viewed, each 
particular section, or company, or battery 
would seem to be moving in a manner inde- 
pendent of the whole, feeding itself, providing 
its own ammunition and following the direc- 
tion of its own officers ; the system of mes- 
sages and signals by which one isolated unit — 
possibly in occupation of a position thirty or 
forty miles away from the centre of operations 
— is kept in continual touch with headquarters, 
would be entirely invisible, and its existence 
would not be so much as suspected. Such 
external observation would naturally fail to 
perceive the immense and complicated net- 
work of relationships which, in reality, holds 
the army together, gives it its significance and 
enables it to achieve its purpose. In the 
absence of an inner understanding, many of 
the activities of the various units would 



HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE 41 

appear incomprehensible, and movements 
that were, as a matter of fact, executed in 
obedience to orders from headquarters as part 
of a complete system of strategy, would seem 
quite unaccountable. If an outside observer 
remained ignorant of the great organisation 
of telephones, telegraphs, orderlies, staff 
officers, and so on, which forms, as it were, the 
nervous system which guides and unifies the 
whole great army, sending out directive 
impulses from the governing centre, and 
receiving information from all the outlying 
points, still less would he suspect that in a 
tent at the controlling base there sat a man, a 
commander-in-chief, a personality in whose 
mind all that immense network of directing 
energies came to a centre. 

Now Eucken's spiritual life presents itself 
to my mind as being closely analogous to the 
invisible and personally controlled network of 
communications which directs and unifies an 
army, feeding each separate portion, and 
assigning to it its specific task in the scheme 
of the whole. Human life and activity, 
viewed in a merely empirical fashion, appears 
as a mere conglomeration of detached events, 
the individuals taking part in it as isolated 
units. But on penetrating behind the veil of 



42 RUDOLF EUCKEN: 

appearances, there is discoverable a world of 
spiritual reality which imparts meaning to the 
flux of phenomena and upon which humanity 
depends for power and guidance. Just as the 
detachments of an army are powerless when 
cut off from their communications, so, in 
human life, the individual cannot fulfil the 
real purpose of his existence unless he be in 
touch with the universal spiritual life which is 
the substance of his being. The parallel may 
well be taken a stage further. The com- 
mander of an army depends for the fulfilment 
of his purposes upon the active co-operation of 
his men, who are not only subordinates, but 
also co-workers. And such is the position of 
humanity as understood by the Jena philo- 
sopher. The spiritual life cannot develop its 
purpose without the co-operation of the 
human race. Man is called upon actively to 
assist in the development and spiritual eleva- 
tion of the universe, and it is precisely in this 
task that our life finds its true depth and 
acquires meaning and value. Moreover, just 
as in the case of the soldier, it is entirely 
fruitless for man to act as a detached unit ; 
it is absolutely essential that he should 
subordinate himself to the demands of the 
spiritual life, no matter how far these may 



HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE 43 

run counter to personal desires and natural 
inclinations : — 

" If the spiritual life has no intrinsic superiority 
to merely human affairs, no idealism can exist, and 
along with it disappears the whole meaning and value 
of our life. . . ." — Main Currents, p. 114. 

Human beings must measure themselves 
by a realm of absolute values. Such sub- 
ordination can never involve a loss of person- 
ality or a negation of self-development (in any 
true sense of the term), since it is nothing 
other than this self-same spiritual life which 
constitutes the centre of man's being, however 
much this centre may be dominated, in only 
too many cases, by non-spiritual forces press- 
ing upon it from the periphery. It is in 
serving the ends of this superior reality that 
man discovers his only lasting satisfaction. 

The reader must not, of course, suppose that 
this illustration, crude as it is, does anything 
like full justice to the fact (for it is as a fact, 
and not as a mere concept, that Eucken would 
have us think of the spiritual life) with which 
we are dealing ; and it no doubt emphasises 
the governing and controlling aspect of the 
spiritual life somewhat at the expense of its 
immanence ; for this life, as we have already 
seen, is not only a unifying and sustaining 



44 RUDOLF EUCKEN 

activity, but also an indwelling force. It also 
fails to bring into prominence the opposition 
which exists between the natural and the 
spiritual levels of life, although this might to 
some extent be represented if we thought of 
the soldiers as being too much attached to 
their own comfort and convenience to find it 
easy to participate in the higher and nobler 
aims of their commander ! 



CHAPTER V 

MAN AND THE SPIRITUAL LIFE 

The Position of Man in the World 

In man's position we perceive an inner con- 
tradiction. He is tied to nature ; yet he feels 
compelled to yield allegiance to something 
higher than nature. The development of 
history shows the progressive emergence in 
humanity of a '' more than human/' and a 
conflict between this and the merely human.^ 
The work of human culture has involved an 
increasing effort to base life upon this spiritual 
standpoint ; it has not been (so Eucken would 
insist) a gradual growth and development, a 
becoming more and more intellectual, refined 
and spiritual on the part of the natural man, 
as some evolutionists would have us think, but 
rather a struggle to seize a higher reality which 
has been a whole from the commencement — 
" change (and with it evolution) is absolutely 
out of the question as far as the substance of 

1 Cf. the exceedingly illuminating treatment of this question 
by Benjamin Kidd in Social Evolution. 



46 RUDOLF EUCKEN : 

spiritual life is concerned " — and is not an 
outgrowth of nature. 

Man cannot abandon the Spiritual Life 

If it be asked : Why should man struggle 
to ascend to this spiritual world ; why should 
he not remain contented upon the natural 
level ? — the answer is that he has, ultimately, 
no choice in the matter. The spiritual life is 
so bound up with human nature that we 
could not abandon it if we would : — 

" I know this earth is not my sphere, 
For I cannot so narrow me, but that 
I still exceed it." 

Man himself, in the very centre of his being, 
is rooted in a world transcending that of first 
appearances (the natural world pure and 
simple) ; and it is impossible for him to realise 
his own personality, to fulfil his own needs, 
without making this ascent. In every age 
man has sacrificed the mere comfort of this 
animal level in pursuit of the Good, the 
Beautiful, the True, the Eternal, the Absolute. 
And in this quest he has discovered his own 
greatest happiness.^ 

1 Eucken would endorse Mr. G. K. Chesterton's forcible 
criticism of pragmatism : — 

" I agree with the pragmatists that apparent objective 
truth is not the whole matter ; that there is an authoritative 



HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE 47 

Man is the Meeting-place of Spirit and Nature 

Man, as seen from the standpoint of the 
activistic philosophy, occupies a position of 
pecuhar difficulty and complication. He is 
surrounded by a world in which spiritual 
reality can manifest itself only in a limited and 
highly imperfect fashion ; yet at the same time 
his instinct of spiritual self-preservation de- 
mands that he should hold fast to this reality, 
for it is his only foothold in a world of changeful 
appearances. To grasp this Absolute becomes 
increasingly difficult in proportion as he allows 
himself to be dominated by the life of the 
natural level ; yet it is upon this level that he 
is compelled to live and work. He is the 
victim of a most painful inner contradiction : 
" Man stands at once in time and above time'* 
There is an antithesis of the sharpest kind 
between the natural man and his humanistic 
civilisation, on the one hand, and, on the other, 
the spiritual life, with its peculiar demands. 

need to believe the things that are necessary to the human 
mind. But I say that one of these necessities precisely is a 
belief in objective truth. The pragmatist tells a man to think 
what he must think and never mind the Absolute.. But precisely 
one of the things that he must think is the Absolute. This 
philosophy, indeed, is a kind of verbal paradox. Pragmatism 
is a matter of human needs ; and one of the first of human needs 
is to be something more than a pragmatist." [Orthodoxy, p. 62.) 



48 RUDOLF EUCKEN: 

Spiritual Values must he Supreme 

The great Jena philosopher steps forward 
in direct opposition to the general reaHstic 
tendency of the modern world, which looks 
upon the spiritual world (in so far as its exist- 
ence is acknowledged at all) as an agreeable, 
but by no means necessary, adornment to a 
life already based upon the natural level, and 
conceives of religion and spiritual culture, in 
general, as things which it may be quite 
laudable to cultivate, if one can spare the time, 
but which have no vital connection with the 
real business of life. Over against this whole 
view of existence Eucken sets up a new 
standard of values. He calls upon men to 
distinguish between what is primary and what 
is secondary and to transfer the centre of 
gravity of life to the primary or spiritual level. 
It is in fact man's specific task to effect this 
transference in the face of the opposition 
which is inherent in the lower stage of reality. 

The World resists the Spiritual Life 

The recognition of a powerful resistance on 
the part of the world to the emergence and 
realisation of spiritual values is an essential 
and characteristic feature of Eucken 's philo- 



HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE 49 

sophy, and imparts to his view of life much of 
its definition and vigour. It brings it, more- 
over, into close touch with the traditional 
Christian view of the enmity between the 
kingdom of heaven and the kingdom of this 
world. And in the history of the Christian 
Church we perceive a good example of the 
universal resistance which human hf e offers to 
the progress of a new and higher manifestation 
of spiritual life ; the old systems of thought 
resisted with all their might the growth of the 
new and wider embodiment of reality, yet 
without being able to arrest the process, 
impelled, as it was, by an overmastering inner 
necessity — their opposition, in fact, served 
only to assist the triumph of Christianity. 

Pantheism and Personality 

If this element in Eucken's thought draws 
him near to the traditional religious view, it 
repels him violently from every sort of 
pantheism, from every attempt to identify 
spirit and nature, to regard the divine as 
wholly immanent in the given universe. 
Pantheism, in all of its many forms, leads 
inevitably to an obliteration of the distinction 
between good and evil and to the elimination 
of personality as a real factor in the develop- 

R.E. E 



50 RUDOLF EUCKEN : 

ment of the universe, and Eucken stands in 
the most uncompromising fashion for the 
significance of this distinction and for the 
strengthening and deepening of the concept 
of personahty. 



The Spiritual Life demands Man's 
Co-operation 

We have already seen that activism regards 
nature and spirit as lower and higher stages 
of a single all-embracing life, and that it is 
the character of this life to work upwards, to 
become self-conscious, to effect its own self- 
realisation. In this ascent man plays a 
specific part. He stands where nature passes 
over into spirit. And his active participation 
is essential to the movement of elevation. 
His work is to raise reality to the new stage. 
However independent the spiritual life may 
be in itself, it does not express itself here and 
now without the aid of man. Human evolu- 
tion is no mere '' unwinding of thread from a 
reel " — on the contrary, it is di creative work in 
which man is a co-worker. Life brings with 
it a constant introduction of new material, 
and is not a mechanical working out of a given 
system. 



HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE 51 

" Further evidence of man's free appropriation of 
the spiritual life and his inner at-one-ment with it is 
conspicuously present in the fact that its develop- 
ment in our midst is conditional on his own work. 
. . . However certain it be that the basis of man's 
work must be laid within a spiritual over-life, yet 
the precise form which it takes must be determined 
by his own struggle. His effort is not something 
reared like a pyramid upon a given foundation. It 
does not rise up undisturbed, never deviating from 
a certain prescribed direction. For doubt is ever 
attacking the foundations afresh, and confusing 
even the main bearings. We must, then, be con- 
stantly reaffirming the spiritual character of our 
life : the situation in which w^e find ourselves to-day 
shows this very clearly. . . . The universe presents 
itself in man variously sundered and graded. It 
becomes all-important to shift upward the centre of 
gravity in his life, thereby enabling him to co-operate 
in the construction of the universe. Without man's 
participation and decision, the movement at his 
particular point can make no further progress." — 
The M. and V, of Life, pp. 98 — 99. 

Man is a Creative Worker 

The reader will perceive the significance of 
this aspect of activism. Man is thereby raised 
out of the mechanism of nature to a position 
of creative responsibihty. Acting through his 
moral and religious personality, man exercises 
a formative influence upon reality. But in 

1: a 



52 RUDOLF EUCKEN 

order to exert this shaping force, he must rise 
above nature and lay hold of the superior life 
which works within him ; for the natural man 
is not free, he is swayed this way and that ; 
selfishness, ambition, vanity, the animal pas- 
sions, hold him in a grip of iron, inhibiting the 
development of his spiritual self, and so long 
as he remains subject to nature he possesses 
no originative capacity. 



Eucken's Philosophy in Four Stages 

The reader may find it useful to think of 
Eucken's philosophy as divisible into four 
fundamental stages : — 

(i) The break with the merely natural life ; 
the negation without which there can be no 
spiritual experience. 

(2) The recognition of an independent but 
indwelling spiritual life ; the new birth which 
is the beginning of all positive religion and 
morality. 

(3) The free, active and personal appropria- 
tion of the spiritual life. 

(4) The organisation of human life and 
civilisation in the interests of the spiritual life 
and subject to its norms ; the overcoming ofth^ 
antithesis between spirit and nature. 



CHAPTER VI 

SPIRIT AND MATTER 

L — Introductory 

The Growth of Materialism in Recent Years 

It may be assumed, without serious danger 
of contradiction, that never at any time in the 
known history of the world has the philosophy 
of materialism, in some form or another, 
attained to such an extensive influence as 
that which it exerts at the present moment. 
To-day this view of life is accepted, not 
perhaps as a theoretical system, but, what is 
much more important, as the working principle 
in all practical affairs, by immense masses of 
the population in every civilised country. The 
widespread rejection of religious tradition has 
thrown innumerable persons back upon what 
they naturally (though quite erroneously) 
regard as the only indisputable reality, 
namely, the immediate world of nature. At 
the same time, large numbers of thinkers have 
come forward to provide popular and easily 



54 RUDOLF EUCKEN : 

comprehensible theories of Hfe on the basis 
of matter ; and a pubHc unacquainted with 
the deeper aspects of reaUty and unaware of 
the inner contradictions of the materiahstic 
systems, but just beginning to think for itself, 
has swallowed without hesitation explana- 
tions of the universe which possess the fatal 
merit of a superficial simplicity. Yet we 
should be making a grave mistake if we 
supposed that the spread of materialism in 
popular circles is due solely, or even mainly, 
to intellectual causes. A very large share in 
the matter is borne by the general conditions 
of present-day life. The last century wit- 
nessed an altogether unprecedented increase 
in man's power over the external world. 
Devoting himself of recent years almost 
exclusively to scientific improvements, to the 
production of wealth, and to the amelioration 
of social surroundings, he has more and more 
neglected his inner life. The interests of the 
modern world have become peripheral rather 
than central. The Rev. R. J. Campbell has 
described the Englishman of the twentieth 
century in words which most of us will feel to 
be true : — 

'* The typical man of to-day is so taken up with 
considerations arising immediately out of his con- 



HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE 55 

nection with what is of the earth earthy that he is 
not so susceptible as he once was to the appeal of the 
purely spiritual. He may be quite a good fellow, 
kind, upright, and pubUc-spirited ; but he is not by 
temperament religious ; he cannot be ; his occupa- 
tions have shaped him otherwise. ... He is not 
opposed to religion, but it is none of his concern : 
all the force of his being falls into other channels.'' 

The Present Reaction Against Materialism 

In reality, however, man is not so constructed 
that he can rest permanently satisfied with 
a mere dependence upon the external world. 
All past attempts to base life upon so-called 
realism, and to put aside spiritual things, have 
led to an inner emptiness and to a speedy 
uprising of idealistic and religious feeling. 
To-day there are abundant indications on the 
upper levels of civilisation that the wave of 
materialism has spent its strength, and that 
even while flooding the lower levels of society, 
it is, in reality, an ebbing force. The present 
chapter will deal very briefly with a few of 
these indications in the world of science. 

II. — Vitalism 

The Revival of Vitalism 

The long-established dominion of material- 
istic ideas in the scientific world has had the 



56 RUDOLF EUCKEN : 

effect of thrusting into the background a num- 
ber of most important facts and points of 
view, and these are now taking a revenge for 
their neglect by coming to the front with 
renewed vigour. It is in this fashion that we 
are to explain the resurrection of vitalism, a 
theory which declares that life is an indepen- 
dent reality belonging to a category different 
from that of matter or energy. 

To mention the names of Eucken, Bergson, 
Boutroux, Renouvier,W. Roux, Driesch, Lodge, 
and McDougall is to convey some idea of the 
exceedingly powerful weight of opinion which 
is now making itself felt in favour of the dis- 
tinctive character of life. As Eucken says in 
Main Currents (p. 185) : — 

" It seems to be more and more out of the question 
that we should conceive of life as a mere property 
of matter, it is becoming more and more recognised 
that life must be granted an independent character/' 

The Distinctive Character of Life 

It would appear that life represents a 
species of being or activity essentially different 
from anything which could reasonably be 
expected to result from physical or chemical 
action. Life stands for a principle of order 
which creates and preserves definite types. 



HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE 57 

Thus we may have two seeds, outwardly 
indistinguishable, but containing within them- 
selves mysterious latent activities which impel 
them to develop along absolutely different 
lines, and produce, in each case, with unerring 
certainty and, as it were, with an indomitable 
purpose, a specific type of plant complete 
down to the most infinitesimal detail. Organic 
hfe, as we know it, seems to be working 
always with an object in view, always teleo- 
logically. How is such an activity as this to 
be conceived of in terms of physics and 
chemistry ? McDougall puts the matter well 
in his valuable work Body and Mind (p. 243) :— 

" This power of persistently turning towards a 
particular end or goal, manifested in these two ways, 
namely, in growth and bodily movement, is the most 
characteristic feature of the life of organisms, 
objectively regarded. ... It seems to be quite 
impossible to explain such apparently teleological 
behaviour of organisms in terms of mechanism. 
Nothing analogous to it can be found in the inorganic 
realm." ^ 

^ Some definitions of life. — For purposes of comparison, a few 
other definitions of life will prove of interest. Thus Sir Oliver 
Lodge says that in his opinion life " is neither matter nor energy, 
nor even a function of matter or of energy, but is something belong- 
ing to a different category ; that by some means at present un- 
known it is able to interact with the material world for a time, but 
that it can also exist in some sense independently ; . . .'* Pro- 
fessor Hans Driesch, of Heidelberg, conceives of organic life as a 



58 RUDOLF EUCKEN : 

The Question of Individuality 

Of these facts which were so long kept in the 
background, one of the most striking is the 

species of rudimentary feeling and willing ; it is thus in some 
sense conscious of an end and deliberately makes towards it. 
This view appears closely analogous to that of the Aristotelian 
school ; in both cases we have what is practically a soul, which, 
dwelling within the plant, animal or man, shapes its growth. 
E. Boutroux finds the distinctive property of life to consist in 
the creation of " a system in which certain parts are subordinate 
to certain other parts," a living thing being thus a "hierarchy" 
composed of " organs " and an " agent." Henri Bergson 
writes : La vie est, avant tout, une tendence a agir sur la matihre 
brute {L'ivolution criatrice, p. 105). And finally I may give a 
very interesting passage from Professor Kerner's book on the 
Natural History of Plants (Vol. I., p. 52) : — 

" In former times a special force was adduced, the force of life. 
More recently, when many phenomena of plant-life had been 
successfully reduced to simple chemical and mechanical pro- 
cesses, this vital force was derided and effaced from the list of 
natural agencies. But by what name shall we now designate 
that force in nature which is liable to perish whilst the proto- 
plasm suffers no physical alteration and in the absence of any 
extrinsic cause ; and which yet, so long as it is not extinct, 
causes the protoplasm to move, to enclose itself, to assimilate cer- 
tain kinds of fresh matter coming within the sphere of its activity 
and to reject others, and which when in full action makes the 
protoplasm adapt its movements under external stimulation 
to existing conditions in the manner which is most expedient ? 

" This force in nature is not electricity nor magnetism ; it is 
not identical with any other natural force ; for it manifests a 
series of characteristic effects which differ from all other forms 
of energy. Therefore, I do not hesitate again to designate as 
' vital force ' this natural agency, not to be identified with any 
other, whose immediate instrument is the protoplasm, and whose 
peculiar effects we call life. The atoms and molecules of proto- 
plasm only fulfil the functions which constitute life so long as 
they are swayed by this vital force. If its dominion ceases 
they yield to the operation of other forces. The recognition of 



HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE 59 

phenomenon of individuality. How does it 
come about that a plant or animal is able to 
retain its individual form with such remark- 
able persistency ? Its constituents change 
day by day. Every few months or years, as 
the case may be, the entire physical structure 
undergoes renewal. Moreover, an animal may 
be fed on a great variety of foods and yet retain 
not only its type but its own specific individu- 
ality, and this may be inherited by its offspring 
generation after generation. What, then, is 
this individual something which thus persists ? 
These are the commonest of observations, but 
their full significance is rarely perceived. 

The Accumulation of Energy in the Organic 
World 
Most important, too, is the fact that the 
degradation of energy which is the rule 
throughout the inorganic world does not hold 
good in the organic realm. Inorganic changes 
invariably proceed, under natural conditions, 
in such a fashion as to diminish the quantity 
of available energy present in the system. 
Water flows down hill ; heat dissipates itself ; 
after a chemical change the energy in the 

a special natural force of this kind is not inconsistent with the 
fact that living bodies may at the same time be subject to 
other natural forces." 



6o RUDOLF EUCKEN: 

remaining products is less available than it 
was in the original substances ; and so on. 
But where life is present the situation is 
entirely different. It is now the rule for 
energy to become accumulated, to be raised to 
a higher potential. A couple of examples 
will make the matter absolutely clear. When 
iron undergoes oxidation in the air the product 
is iron oxide, which is an inert substance, and 
has far less potential energy than iron and 
oxygen ; but when a plant absorbs nutriment 
in the shape of water, carbon dioxide and other 
substances, the organic products which it 
builds up in its leaves and stenjs contain more 
potential energy than was present in the 
original water, carbon dioxide, etc. A still 
better example of the latter kind of action 
would be the case of human work ; a man may 
consume a substance, say, cheese, which con- 
tains energy at a comparatively low potential, 
and may then take a heavy weight to the 
summit of a high tower, thus raising some of 
the energy previously contained in his food to 
a position of immediate availability.^ 

1 " All life, animal and vegetable, seems in its essence like 
an effort to accumulate energy and then to let it flow into 
flexible channels, changeable in shape, at the end of which it 
will accomplish infinitely varied kinds of work." — Bergson, 
Creative Evolution, p. 267. 



HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE 6i 

III. — Mind and Body 

If it is not easy to account for the pheno- 
mena of plant and animal life upon the basis 
of a mechanistic philosophy, the task becomes 
infinitely more difficult when we approach the 
problem of human life and consciousness. 

The Mind as a Unifier 

The salient fact about the human mind is 
its unifying, synthetic activity. The body, 
with its eyes, nose, ears and fingers, absorbs 
a host of impressions from the outer world, 
and in the mind these are connected with one 
another and with previous impressions ; they 
are rationalised and wrought into the personal 
consciousness of the individual receiving the 
impressions, which thus acts as a unifying, 
organising entity, ever taking in fresh matter, 
and ever imparting to it order and relation- 
ship. Can it seriously be supposed that such 
an activity as this is a mere product of physico- 
chemical action in the brain ? 

The Central Importance of the Problem of 
Mind and Body 

All those difficult problems which underhe 
materialism and vitalism come to a head in 
the relationship of mind and body. Does the 



62 RUDOLF EUCKEN : 

higher depend upon the lower or the lower 
upon the higher ; does spirit develop from 
nature or nature from spirit ? This is the 
question of questions. And nowhere does 
this central question press upon us more 
urgently, more immediately and more prac- 
tically than in the problem of mind and body ; 
for here it comes into the closest contact not 
only with physiology and natural science in 
general, but with ethics, religion, and the whole 
realm of human interests, whether practical or 
ideal. 

Professor Eucken himself has not as yet, 
unfortunately, occupied himself to any great 
extent with psychology, but the problem to 
which we refer is so directly connected with 
the fundamental ideas of activism that we 
shall do well to deal with it very briefly ; 
moreover, any light which it may throw upon 
the philosophy we are studying will be all the 
more valuable as coming from an independent 
quarter. 

The Materialistic View 

The early materialists, such as Cabanis, 
Vogt and Moleschott, looked upon the mind as 
a definite, material thing, which existed 
within the brain ; Cabanis wrote, " thought 
is a secretion of the brain/' and Vogt, '' there 



HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE 63 

subsists the same relation between thought 
and the brain, as between bile and the liver/' 
It goes without saying that such a crude view 
obtained no very wide credence, and it soon 
gave way to explanations more in accordance 
with the possibilities of the case. The most 
important of these was the theory known as 
epiphenomenalism and associated with the 
name of Huxley. This view held that the 
changes which go on in the physical brain 
(changes in the nerve cells, alterations of 
pressure, possible electric conditions, and so 
forth) are the cause of consciousness and of 
everything which goes to make up what is 
called '' mind '' or '' soul." Huxley compared 
the mind to the whistle of a steam engine, con- 
sidering it to be a mere result of mechanical 
and chemical processes, and to be entirely 
devoid of independent reality. 

Mechanical View of Life losing Ground 
The first point which naturally occurs to us 
in connection with this view is that it is 
bound up with the mechanistic explanation 
of life in general, an explanation which 
appears, at the present time, to be losing 
ground rapidly.^ Large numbers of our most 

* Some reference has already been made (under Vitalism) 
to a few of the reasons for this loss of ground. Serious difficulties 



64 RUDOLF EUCKEN : 

prominent men of science, far from seeking to 
explain the mind according to the principles 
of physics and chemistry, are rather asking 
themselves, can we give a complete rational 
account of the smallest organism, or even of a 
single cell, according to these principles ? 
Those who refuse to accept the materialistic 
view of the mind are abundantly justified in 
saying to those who put it forward : In the first 
place, will you kindly explain to us, according 
to your view, the nature and behaviour of the 
simplest cell, and then we shall have pleasure 
in listening to what you may have to suggest 
with regard to an entity immeasurably more 
complex than any cell ! 

Mind not derived from Matter 

But even if the lower forms of life had all 
been satisfactorily accounted for, there would 
remain a very formidable army of difficulties 
peculiar to the problem of mind and body as 
it presents itself in the case of human beings. 
We have seen that the materialistic theory 
assumes at the very outset the entire depen- 

have also cropped up in connection with heredity, mutation, 
restitution, and in general with the whole subject of evolution, 
which now appears much less simple than was formerly thought 
to be the case. 



HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE 65 

dence of mind upon body. And it is just here 
that it meets with an apparently insuperable 
obstacle. In what manner are we to conceive 
of the origin of thought and feeling from 
matter ? It is sufficiently easy to write 
" consciousness is a function of the cerebral 
nervous system/' but I defy any man to 
attach a rational significance to the phrase. 
One thing, at least, is absolutely certain, and 
that is that consciousness is not a '' function '' 
of matter in any recognised sense of the term, 
and that none of the known functions of 
matter bears the remotest resemblance to 
consciousness. Such a phrase as this is 
merely a refuge for ignorance. Every think- 
ing person must be able to realise that psychic 
states are essentially and utterly different 
from all the phenomena of chemistry and 
physics. And if we once adequately realise 
this important truth, we shall not too readily 
beUeve, as is often alleged, that a more com- 
plete knowledge of the physics and chemistry 
of the brain and nervous system will enable 
us some day to grasp the real nature of mind ; 
for the difficulty is not an insufficient know- 
ledge of the physical aspect of the problem, 
but the fact that mind and body belong to 
fundamentally different categories. Natural 



66 RUDOLF EUCKEN : 

science deals with spatial conceptions, while 
consciousness is non-spatial. As Herbert 
Spencer said, the differences between mind 
and body are so important as to '' transcend 
all other differences/' The situation, in this 
respect, was very forcibly set forth by Pro- 
fessor Tyndall in his address to the British 
Association at Norwich : — 

" The passage from the physics of the brain to the 
corresponding facts of consciousness is unthinkable. 
Granted that a definite thought and a definite 
molecular action in the brain occur simultaneously, 
we do not possess the intellectual organ, nor appa- 
rently any rudiments of the organ, which would 
enable us to pass by a process of reasoning from one 
to the other. They appear together, but we do not 
know why. Were our minds and senses so expanded 
as to enable us to see and feel the very molecules of 
the brain, were we capable of following all their 
motions, all their groupings and electric discharges, 
if such there be, and were we intimately acquainted 
with the corresponding states of thought and feeling, 
we should be as far as ever from the solution of the 
problem — ' How are these physical processes con- 
nected with the facts of consciousness ? ' The 
chasm between the two classes remains still intel- 
lectually impassable . " 

It is, of course, an obvious truth that certain 
mental conditions invariably follow upon 



HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE 67 

certain physical events ; a blow causes pain, 
alcohol causes excitement, poison causes 
death, an accident to the brain may result in 
insanity, and so on; but however close the 
correspondence between body and mind may 
be, it must not be too hastily assumed that 
the latter is a mere dependent of the former. 
If such cases as are suggested above tend to 
prove that the mind is, as the materialists 
would have it, a bye-product of matter, what 
is proved by the innumerable cases in which 
the mind operates as a cause of physical 
phenomena ? It surely cannot be denied 
that joyful thoughts promote the circulation 
of the blood, while depressing ones check it, 
that the idea of food promotes the flow of the 
gastric juices, that sudden terror or prolonged 
mental distress may cause profound physical 
changes, that disease can be cured, often 
almost immediately, by mental means, that 
emotion is a source of fatigue, and in general 
that the body is in a thousand ways subject 
to the mind ? In view of such facts as these, 
it seems impossible to believe that the body is 
the sole reality. If the mind were a mere 
offshoot of matter, we could hardly conceive 
of it as an actual cause in the physical 
realm. 

F 2 



68 RUDOLF EUCKEN : 



The Unity of Consciousness 

Perhaps the most powerful argument 
against the materiahstic view of the relation- 
ship between body and mind is that afforded 
by a study of the unity of consciousness — a 
subject to which I have already referred. The 
mind is in some unexplained fashion able to 
take in impressions through the various chan- 
nels of sensuous perception and to build them 
into a unity. In the case of a person of our 
acquaintance, for example, we form an idea 
which is a unity, although it is compounded of 
auial, visual and other sensations which have 
entered the mind by quite different channels ; 
on hearing the voice of the person in question 
we immediately recall his appearance, on 
seeing him we may be instantly reminded of 
a song we once heard him sing, and so on. 
Now there is a very large mass of evidence 
which goes to show that this unifying process 
does not take place in the physical brain, but 
in some unknown psychic medium ; the 
various nerves entering the brain do not run 
together to a common centre, and on the basis 
of the materialistic psychology no satisfactory 
explanation of this extraordinary process of 



HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE 69 

unification (the central fact of mind activity) 
has ever been given. ^ 

Psycho-physical Parallelism 

It is the consideration of such difficulties 
which has driven many modern psychologists 
to espouse the doctrine of psycho-physical 
parallelism, which declares mind and body to 
be but different aspects of the same funda- 
mental reality and denies the existence of 
any causal relationship between the two. 
This view, in one form or another, claims the 
adherence of many noted thinkers, among 
whom we may mention A. Bain, Spencer, 
Hoffding, and Wundt. It is usually so inter- 

^ A very full account of this subject will be found in 
McDougall's work, Body and Mind, chap. XXI. 

T, H. Green and the Unity of Consciousness. — The matter 
has been most lucidly dealt with, in its more philosophic aspects, 
by the late T. H. Green. The following quotation will suggest 
his position : "If there is such a thing as a connected experience 
of related objects, there must be operative in consciousness a 
unifying principle, which not only presents related objects to 
itself, but at once renders them objects and unites them in 
relation to each other by this act of presentation ; and which 
is single throughout the experience." — Proleg. to Ethics, p. 37. 
It was, he believed, impossible to deduce this principle of unity 
from nature, since nature itself, as we see it, is presented to us 
only through this inner unity : " nature implies something 
other than itself, as the condition of its being what it is." In 
other words, only something outside nature can experience 
nature. Or as Eucken says, there must be in man something 
more than man the higher animal. This is not a religious state- 
ment ; it is the basic fact of all science. 



70 RUDOLF EUCKEN: 

preted as to become almost indistinguishable 
from materialism (as in Haeckel's works, for 
example), although by assuming the reality 
which underlies the two aspects to be spiritual 
it may easily be given an idealistic term. In 
Main Currents Eucken expresses the opinion 
that this doctrine is not so much an indepen- 
dent explanation as an offshoot of materialism 
or of spiritualism, according to the manner of 
its interpretation : 

"it {i.e., psycho-physical parallelism) either makes 
the life of the soul a mere reflex of natural processes, 
or the latter mere appearances of the spiritual 
reality ; in neither case is it neutral — ^it approxi- 
mates either to materialism or to spiritualism." 

As regards the usual form of this theory 
it may perhaps be said, without injustice, that 
it acts the part of a screen behind which the 
materialists have endeavoured to hide their 
retreat from their original position ; for the 
basic reality which is said to underlie body 
and mind, being quite undefined, serves the 
purpose of a deus ex machina. 

Modern Views of the Mind support Eucken' s 
Concept of the Spiritual Life 

A great deal more might be said with 
advantage respecting the obstacles which 



HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE 71 

confront any attempt to explain the relation- 
ship of mind and body along purely natural 
lines, but space forbids, and I have already, I 
hope, made it fairly clear that Eucken's 
recognition of an independent spiritual life, 
far from being a vague metaphysical assump- 
tion, is almost, if not quite, a necessity of any 
adequate explanation of this relationship — 
the widespread adoption of psycho-physical 
parallelism is, indeed, practically an admission 
of this necessity ; for, as we have seen, this 
doctrine lays particular stress on the fact 
that the psychical, though parallel with the 
physical, is not dependent upon the latter. 

Eucken as a Monist 

The foregoing chapters will have prepared 
the reader to some extent for Eucken's own 
position with regard to this problem. He has 
described himself as a spiritualistic monist ; 
but he employs this term in a somewhat special 
sense. On p. 228 of Main Currents we read : 

"Monism of this type would base itself upon the 
fact that inner life does not appear merely at 
separate points, scattered and divided, but that 
it unites to form a comprehensive connected whole, 
which reveals, at the level of human existence, a 
spiritual life elevated above the individual and 



72 RUDOLF EUCKEN! 

with it an inner world rich in its own problems 
and powers." 

The human mind is thus asserted to be no 
mere reflection of natural processes, but to be, 
in its true inwardness, a portion of a great 
superhuman whole, which is the spiritual 
foundation of the universe. From Eucken's 
standpoint the natural is a lower stage of the 
spiritual, and the relation of body to mind 
becomes the relation of a certain stage of 
reality to a higher stage of the same reality : 

" the same Being which exhibits nature and the 
natural life of the soul . . . begins in spiritual life 
to consolidate itself to form a whole and to develop 
a content. . . . Such an elevation from sub-spiritual 
to spiritual is no mere speculative demand, but a 
task which claims the whole of human life, for all 
specifically human achievement, more especially 
ethical progress, is an ascent from nature to spirit, 
an elevation of our being from the natural to the 
spiritual stage.'' 

Here we see with the greatest clearness that 
Eucken's philosophy is ethical and religious 
rather than intellectualistic. At the same 
time, it is essential to remember that the 
spiritual stage includes the sciences, since they 
are a spiritualisation of nature : the reader 
must rid his mind of the idea that the spiritual 
is, with Eucken, something vague or unreal ! 



HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE 73 

At this point I must again remind the reader 
of a possible misunderstanding. Man as he 
is, man on the natural plane, does not possess 
this spiritual life without effort. Although 
the natural and spiritual may be ultimately 
but different stages of the one reality, the gulf 
between them is nevertheless enormous, and 
it is precisely this gulf which imparts to human 
life its specific character. In other words, 
Eucken's monism contains within itself a 
sharp dualism. It differs very drastically, 
especially in the importance it assigns to 
personality and ethical responsibility, from 
ordinary idealistic monism ; and it is through 
this difference that it is enabled to avoid the 
dangers and limitations of intellectualism and 
pantheism. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE PLACE OF THE INTELLECT 

" The intellectual conflict is an affair of outposts ; 
the real conflict is between ways of living.*' — Eucken. 

An incalculable amount of error and con- 
fusion has crept into our whole modern way 
of thought as a result of the false idea that the 
human spirit is identical with the intellect, 
that the latter represents man's true self, and 
that our whole view of life must be determined 
by the rational faculty. We have been far 
too long under the dominion of this pedantic 
intellectualism, and our life has been marred 
and distorted by its influence. 

Bergson and the Intellect 

The modern world has reason to be 
peculiarly grateful to Eucken and Bergson 
for their determined resistance to intellec- 
tualism. The latter has pointed out that the 
intellect no more represents the mind as a 
whole, than the eye represents the body as a 
whole. Just as the body needs an eye in 



RUDOLF EUCKEN 75 

order to form a definite image of a particular 
section of reality, so the mind needs the 
intellect to aid it in the proper performance of 
its functions. The intellect gives us, says 
Bergson, that view of life which will be most 
useful to us for immediate practical purposes, 
and in this way it is absolutely invaluable ; 
the process of evolution has in fact developed 
it for this express purpose. But just as the 
headlight of a motor car throws a narrow beam 
of light upon that portion of the road which 
lies immediately in front of the driver without 
making the surrounding landscape visible, so 
the intellect, while assisting us in the process 
of handling matter, and in the acts of daily 
life, is not adapted for the illumination of our 
life as a whole. A fundamental mistake is 
made, therefore, when the intellect is exalted 
to the position of supreme arbiter of truth and 
sole criterion of reality. It is then called upon 
to discharge a task for which it was in no sense 
intended. 

Intellect and Instinct 
Bergson lays great stress upon the difference 
between intellect and instinct. It would take 
us far afield to discuss the problem of instinct, 
but it may be remarked that while intellect 
creates forms and distinctions in the interests 



76 RUDOLF EUCKEN : 

of the sharp deHmitation of a particular 
section of reaHty, instinct tends to obHterate 
distinctions and produce a direct absorption 
in reaHty ; while the former marks out 
individual limits and enhances self-conscious- 
ness, the latter works in an opposite sense, 
merging the self in some other reality. For 
example, when we perform any action with 
which we are unfamiliar, we make an intense 
use of the intellect and are all the while keenly 
self-conscious : a man learning to ride a horse 
carries out all the necessary movements with 
deliberate thought, and is only too conscious 
of the fact that he and the horse are separate 
entities, for there is, as yet, no instinctive bond 
between horse and rider ; but after lengthy 
experience the actions which were at first 
performed with conscious thought become 
instinctive, the intellect is no longer used, and 
the man rides the horse without a thought. 
The man is now in harmony with his mount, 
and the sense of separateness has disappeared. 
In the case of an exceptionally good rider we 
even say that he and his horse are one. This 
disappearance of separateness, this fusion of 
subject and object, is seen very clearly in the 
case of any strong human instinct, such as 
i^aternal feeling, or love between the sexes. 



HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE 77 

Intuition 

Such examples as these will help us to see 
how much more intimate is an instinctive 
relationship than any merely intellectual con- 
nection, and how meagre is any knowledge 
acquired through pure reason compared with 
that which may flow in upon us through other 
channels. Bergson lays great weight upon 
intuition (which is, of course, related to 
instinct) and seeks to convince us that an 
intuitive absorption in reality will give us a 
far deeper knowledge of its nature than that 
which the intellect could convey to us. It 
must not, however, be thought that elementary 
instincts of the kind referred to above are 
identical with Bergson's philosophical intui- 
tion, although there is undoubtedly a certain 
analogy ; the point is merely that the great 
French thinker seeks to draw near to reality 
by means of spiritual faculties other than the 
intellect — the precise nature of instinct and 
intuition is, of course, wrapped in obscurity. 
Bergson's point of view has been tersely put 
by Professor Boyce Gibson in an article in 
The Quest of January, 191 1, entitled *' The 
Intuitionism of Henri Bergson " : — 

" Philosophical speculation must therefore beware 
of using the intellect as its instrument. The intellect 



7S RUDOLF EUCKEN: 

has been forged to meet practical ends, and no science 
is its true self save as a practical organon. The 
intellect finds its true sphere of usefulness when con- 
struing movement in terms of immobility. This is 
its practical raison d'etre. The trouble begins only 
when philosophers drag into the sphere of speculation 
methods of thought which the exigencies of practical 
life have hammered into shape." 

While Bergson turns to his " metaphysical 
intuition '' to supply a pathway to reality, 
Eucken would transfer the centre of gravity 
of philosophy from the intellect to the life- 
process itself, and more especially to the latter 
as revealed in man's personality, in the depths 
of his religious, moral, and artistic nature. It 
would be a mistake, however, to conceive of 
our philosopher as a mere anti-intellectualist. 
His object is not to deny the intellect, but to 
assign to it a due, and not a disproportionate, 
importance in the system of life as a whole. 
Just as the coming of Christianity drew men 
away from the intellectualism of the Grecian 
schools to give them an entirely new insight 
into the universe, and to open up to them an 
inner life of unprecedented depth and warmth, 
so Eucken believes that the materialism and 
intellectualism of present-day life will not be 
overcome except by a development of the 



HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE 79 

inner life, and he seeks to lead the man of 
to-day to an ethico-religious life. It is his 
first concern to bring to the front again the 
great question of man's soul and its welfare. 

Euckens Criticism of Intellectualism 
In The Problem of Human Life we see how 
Eucken calls the attention of his readers to 
those great philosophers of the past who dealt 
in human and spiritual realities, rather than 
to the elaborators of systems. The sympathy 
which he bestows upon men like Plotinus, 
Augustine and Luther, who were no mere 
thinkers but heroes of the inner life, is in itself 
an indication of his mental bias. Further 
evidence in the same direction is forthcoming 
from a consideration of Eucken's critical 
attitude towards philosophers of an intellec- 
tualistic trend, such as Spinoza, Hegel and 
Spencer. He finds himself decidedly opposed 
to Hegel in the latter's attempt to reduce 
reality to pure thought, and says of Hegelian- 
ism {The Proh, of H, Life, p. 502) : — 

'' The system, if forced to abide by the position it 
has taken up, can offer nothing more than a thought 
of thought, a radiation of the forms and powers of 
thought into the universe, a transformation of the 
whole of reality into a tissue of logical relations. 



8o RUDOLF EUCKEN: 

And this necessarily destroys the immediacy of Ufe 
in all its forms. It banishes all psychical inwardness 
and at the same time all spiritual content. It is a 
dire contradiction of this main tendency when, after 
all, a world of sentiment is recognised, a spiritual 
depth, a realm of ethical values. Everything of the 
kind ought to vanish before this logical machinery." 

And he goes on to explain that HegeFs real 
power was to be found in a " living intuition 
of spiritual reality/' which supplied content 
and warmth to a cold conceptual structure 
in which it had no logical status : — 

" The secret of Hegel is largely this : that he com- 
bines a rigid, apparently iron-bound system with a 
wealth of intuition, which breaks through again and 
again with spontaneous freshness and force.'' 

Moreover, Eucken shows marked sympathy 
with Schopenhauer's repudiation of the too 
smooth rationalism of the intellectualistic 
tendency, and with his recognition of all those 
aspects of life which do not fit in to neatly 
rounded-off conceptual systems. The latter 
is a point of some importance, for it throws an 
interesting light on Eucken, showing us that 
above all things he respects reality. He 
possesses, indeed, a power rare in professional 
philosophers ; for he is able to appreciate the 
significance of inconvenient facts and does not 



HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE 8i 

seek to evade them or to force them into any 
rigid framework. His criticism of Hegel is 
peculiarly valuable in that it illustrates, by 
contrast, a characteristic of activism, namely, 
that it bases itself upon observed reality and 
not upon abstract concepts. 



Knowledge not obtained through the Intellect 
alone 

At the risk of a little repetition I must again 
endeavour to remove a possible misunder- 
standing by pointing out that Eucken does not 
use the term " spiritual life " in the sense in 
which it was employed by the German specu- 
lative philosophers and their followers, as 
signifying pure thought. It stands for the 
active, creative principle which is behind the 
whole universe. To know truth does not 
mean to make a clear-cut system of concepts 
and believe that everything not faUing within 
its limits is false, but to enter into as close as 
possible a relationship with this fundamental 
spiritual reality. It is more particularly here 
that we seem to perceive an analogy with 
Bergson and with the great historical mystics. 
Consider, for example, the passage on p. 63 
of Main Currents, where Eucken speaks of the 

R.E. G 



82 RUDOLF EUCKEN: 

active, upward movement by which man 
approaches truth :— 

" This striving towards truth has nothing to do 
with any passive state of being existing independently 
of all life ; rather does reality lie within life, attain- 
able only through life. This life ... is, however, 
no merely human affair, for it represents the inde- 
pendent self-life of the whole of reality ..." 

The foundation of knowledge is thus a 
world-life which entirely transcends man's 
intellect, and any system of thought which 
would cut down reality to the measure of our 
intellect produces a lamentable impoverish- 
ment of the content of life.^ 

^ F. W. F oyster on the limitations of the intellect. — " Thou 
must have the courage to be humble, to make it clear to thyself 
how minutely small is that particular section of life which has 
come within the sphere of thy tiny mind, how fragmentary is 
thy experience, how limited and distracted is thy thought by 
all sorts of prejudices, desires and moods, and how many secrets 
of life are there of which man can have no knowledge save 
through sympathetic insight ! ... In questions of ethical and 
religious knowledge, the intellect, too, must realise the great 
truth that he who would save his life must lose it. Only when 
it knows its limitations, abandons its arrogant self-sufficiency 
and acknowledges the existence of higher sources of knowledge, 
can the intellect itself be preserved from those errors, abstractions, 
and negations which disturb the human soul and divorce mental 
activity from reality. We must remember that Virgil was 
not able to act as guide through the mazes of life, without 
invoking the aid of Beatrice." — Autoritat und Freiheit, by 
F. W. Forster, p. 86. Forster then goes on to state that one 
of the great functions of positive and authoritative rehgion is 



HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE 83 

Reason and Ethics 

After this it goes without saying that Eucken 
is opposed to the reduction of ethics to a 
rational science. Our conduct must be based 
upon something broader and more stable than 
any partial view of reality, and the intellect, 
not comprehending the entire spiritual life, 
cannot serve as the foundation of morality. 
The relationship between reason and morality 
is dealt with in a striking fashion by Benjamin 
Kidd in Social Evolution^ and his main con- 
clusion is in many respects closely analogous 
to that reached by the Jena philosopher. 
Kidd's great contention is that the real social 
dynamic is to be sought in the basic religious 
and ethical convictions upon which all civilisa- 
tions have originally been built up, and that 
the intellect plays its legitimate r6le only when 
it assists in the development of these founda- 
tions and in their translation into practice ; 
when it makes itself independent and would 
itself take the direction of conduct into its 
hands, its activities are pernicious ; a healthy 

to protest, on principle, *' against the intellect being divorced 
from the life of the soul as a whole, against the separation of 
the mere thinking process from love, self-knowledge and the 
fundamental truths to which we obtain access through religion ; 
for rational activity of this sort is destructive of character, of 
civilisation and even of the intellect itself." 

G 2 



84 RUDOLF EUCKEN : 

society is one in which the intellect is being 
successfully held down in its proper position 
of subordination, a decadent society one in 
which the individual reason is divorced from 
the authority of higher truths. I have not 
space at this point to go into the grounds upon 
which Benjamin Kidd bases his views, but 
will recur to Social Evolution in the next 
chapter. Let the reader compare, for a 
moment, the position just stated with a 
very important passage in Main Currents 
(p. 85) :- 

The Dependence of the Intellect upon the 
Spiritual Life 

*' Intellectual work itself does not become positive 
and productive until it becomes an integral portion 
of an inclusive spiritual life, both receiving from that 
life and contributing to its advancement, until it is 
guided by the resultant drift of great spiritual 
organisations and impelled by the energies which 
originate from these sources. That this really is so, 
can be proved both directly and indirectly : all 
genuine intellectual accomplishment has stood in 
close relationship with movements of spiritual life 
as a whole ; on the other hand, whenever the work 
has allowed such relationships to lapse it has rapidly 
sunk to empty formalism or uncertain reflection. 
Such a maintenance of the dependence of the intellect 



HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE 85 

upon the whole is perfectly compatible with the 
recognition of its importance and significance within 
the whole." 

Emerson put the matter in a nutshell when 
he said : '' the blindness of the intellect begins 
when it would be something of itself." ^ 

Intellect not the Driving Force in History 
A very considerable section of the modern 
public is still under the sway of the old 
intellectualism, and it will be impossible to 
build up a positive synthesis of life until we 
have formed a clear conception of the real 

^ Evil Practical Results of Intellectualism. — The disastrous 
extent to which intellectualism has permeated the modern world 
is best revealed through a consideration of some of its practical 
results, a subject into which we cannot enter within the limits 
of this chapter. The modern examination system constitutes 
a vast network extending all over the civilised world, serving 
to hold back from nearly all the higher walks of life, and from 
many of the superior lower walks, all those young people who 
fail to exhibit a certain decidedly mechanical type of intellectual 
ability, no matter how rich they may be in other mental, moral 
and practical qualities, some of them of the utmost value to the 
community ; this system has the deplorable effect of causing 
both teachers and parents to concentrate upon one narrow form 
of intellectual development, rather than upon moral and spiritual 
training. The influence of the examination is responsible, too, 
perhaps, to some extent, for the over-valuation of brain-work in 
general throughout the whole community, so that we have the 
spectacle of a nation in which 250 men will apply for a vacant 
post as a clerk at a poor salary, while large tracts of land are 
uncultivated for lack of capable workers, and in which women 
flee by thousands from every sort of wholesome domestic work in 
order to take up any underpaid, sedentary occupation which 
will enable them to avoid the despised hand- work. 



86 RUDOLF EUCKEN : 

place of the intellect in life. The secondary 
r6le which the intellect plays in the process of 
the spiritual evolution of the race is admirably 
illustrated in the case of the early develop- 
ment of Christianity. Here we see how a very 
few men, nearly all of them standing upon a 
comparatively low level of intellectual develop- 
ment, became possessed by a marvellous, 
transforming, inspiring, spiritual energy which 
drove them irresistibly forward to the appa- 
rently impossible task of the conversion of 
the whole world to an utterly new way of 
life. It remains the most remarkable fact 
in the whole of human history that in a 
few years this handful of pioneers had per- 
formed a work which changed, for ever, the 
entire course of human history. Could the 
philosophers of the early Christian period, 
looking down from the heights of a cultured 
superiority upon the despised, simple-minded 
apostles of the new religion, have foreseen the 
developments of the future, how great would 
have been their amazement ! With absolute 
incredulity they would have beheld a world in 
which they and all their intellectual systems 
were no more than historical curiosities, but 
the whole surface of which was scattered with 
innumerable buildings, the noblest works of 



HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE 87 

human hands, consecrated to the rehgion of 
the obscure Galilean carpenter, and named after 
those same peasants and fishermen whom they 
had barely heard of as a group of religious 
fanatics. In the history of the Reformation, 
too, Eucken sees an excellent example of '' the 
dependence of thought upon the energy of 
spiritual life '' ; he draws our attention to the 
fact that the great revolutionary energies which 
rose into being at this time took their source, 
not in rational and logical considerations, but in 
a feeling of inward oppression, a passionate 
desire for spiritual self-preservation, which, 
breaking down all barriers {Not bricht Eisen, as 
Luther cried), swept over Europe like water 
rushing from a burst reservoir, and created its 
intellectual expression out of its own necessi- 
ties. That Luther, the man of spiritual power 
and passion, and not Erasmus, the scholar and 
logician, was the motive personality, he per- 
ceives to be highly significant. 

Conclusion 

The paths by which our philosopher seeks 
to lead men to a deeper reality than any which 
intellect ualism can reveal will, I trust, be 
made more or less clear in other sections of 
this study. The present chapter has served 



88 RUDOLF EUCKEN 

its purpose if it has thrown light upon Eucken's 
conception of the intellect as being ultimately 
dependent upon the content of the spiritual 
reality which we possess. The real struggle 
is not between theories and theories, but 
between personalities and personalities ; and 
in this conflict the victory is not to the 
intellectualists, but to those who can develop 
the most powerful spiritual life. 



CHAPTER VIII 

CIVILISATION 

It may be objected to Eucken's view of 
society, that he is actuated by what John 
Stuart Mill called " an inordinate desire of 
unity." It will possibly be urged that unity 
is not after all so necessary, that mankind can 
very well afford to do without it, or even that 
it is better to Hve in a state of search and 
uncertainty. 

The Need for Unity 

Man is, however, by his very nature a unifier. 
The human mind is itself an instrument for 
the unification of experience* The spiritual 
life which works in man is unceasingly com- 
pelling us towards the task of synthesis. The 
metaphysical tendency in our nature is an 
element which can never be crushed. Every 
philosophical, moral and religious teacher has 
taken for granted the necessity for some sort 
of unity ; otherwise his office could have had 
no rational significance. If chaos be superior 



90 RUDOLF EUCKEN: 

to order, why, indeed, should people think at 
all? 

The very function of thought itself is to 
unite men in the recognition of truths and 
principles superior to the opinions and whims 
of individuals. The disintegration of tradi- 
tional truths which have long acted as a 
cement holding society together cannot be 
regarded as in itself progressive, except in so 
far as it prepares the way for the formation 
of a new and more firmly founded body of 
truth. Such disintegration can be no more 
than a transitional phenomenon. The duty of 
the present age is to work towards a new and 
more comprehensive synthesis of reality. In 
the pursuance of this object it will be necessary 
to clear away a great deal of accretion which 
has gathered around the traditional truths, 
while at the same time preserving the com- 
plete core of the truth itself. To quote from 
Professor Edward Caird {The Social Philosophy 
of Comte, p. 157) : — 

" The hard labour of distinguishing, in the tradi- 
tions of the past, between the germinative principles 
out of which the future must spring, and those 
external forms and adjuncts which every day is 
making more incredible, must be undertaken by 
anyone who would restore the broken unity of 
man's life." 



HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE 91 

The Essence of Civilisation 
The essential difference between a mere 
conglomeration of individuals and a civilised 
society is that the latter is built up upon a 
framework of spiritual life which imparts to 
it unity and purpose. This framework may 
be but a very inadequate one ; it may represent 
the merest fragment of the full content of 
spiritual life, nevertheless it serves as a uniting 
super-individual power, and redeems the 
society which it inspires from chaos and 
emptiness. In the great civilisations of the 
past we have examples of such syntheses of 
spiritual life. Consider, for example, the 
types of life which grew up under the influ- 
ence of Greek thought (Hellenism), Indian 
philosophy and religion, and Catholicism in 
the Middle Ages : here we have three distinct 
species of civilisation, each with its own canons 
of moralit5^ its own metaphysics, its own type 
of manners and customs, and its own peculiar 
art and literature. Each of these types 
represented a specific concentration of 
spiritual life. Each brought into prominence 
some aspect of reality which was more or less 
neglected by the others. Greek civilisation 
stood more especially for the harmonious 
development of the given natural content of 



92 RUDOLF EUCKEN: 

life ; Indian civilisation for a separation of the 
spirit from nature, for a passive and specula- 
tive type of existence ; and mediaeval civili- 
sation for a great concentration upon the 
ethical perfection of man in the light of a new 
spiritual world of faith and love. All such 
types of civilisation may be looked upon as 
attempts at a systematisation and unification 
of life originating in "an incontestable and 
fundamental impulse of all spiritual life/' 

Civilisation as a Concentration of Spiritual 
Life 

The reader will not have forgotten Eucken's 
use of the term syntagma, explained on p. 12, 
and bearing this in mind we may put the 
matter in a different form by saying that a 
civilisation, as distinct from a mere aggrega- 
tion of individuals, is a specific construction 
of life based upon a syntagma. If I might be 
allowed to make use of a crude illustration, I 
would compare such a construction to the 
act of crystallisation : when a solution of 
some salt begins to crystalHse, the stray 
molecules which are wandering about at 
random in the liquid collect around certain 
nuclei and there build up a united, systematic 
whole according to the laws which regulate 



HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE 93 

the growth of crystals ; and in similar fashion 
the spiritual energies which are all the while 
seething through humanity and groping, as it 
were, for a means of expression, concentrate 
around particular nuclei {syntagmen) and thus 
manifest themselves in deJBLnite form as types of 
civilisation, as organisations of human culture. 
A healthy and growing civilisation is one 
which continues to give more and more power- 
ful expression to the particular syntagma upon 
which it is based ; that is to say, it is a con- 
centrated and purposeful development of basic 
ethical and religious norms. A decadent 
society, on the other hand, must be looked 
upon as one in which the individuals com- 
prising it have cut themselves loose from these 
norms, thus causing a condition of disintegra- 
tion. In the case of any given society at any 
given period, however, the situation may be 
very complicated. Several different construc- 
tions of life may be struggling together for the 
mastery. Old systems may be breaking down 
and new ones may be in process of formation. 
Growth and decadence may be found side by 
side in the same civilisation. Our present 
position is, indeed, in the highest degree com- 
plicated. In western civilisation we perceive 
such syntagmen as Roman Catholicism^ 



94 RUDOLF EUCKEN : 

Materialistic Socialism (which are the two 
most definite examples), and Liberal Chris- 
tianity, existing side by side and constantly 
endeavouring to expand their influence, each 
believing itself fully capable of taking over the 
whole of life and looking forward to a time 
when it shall have driven its opponents from 
the field. And outside all the definite con- 
structions of life there exists an enormous 
mass of people who live to themselves, owning 
no particular religion or philosophy, a mass 
which has resulted from the disintegration of 
the old syntagmen (cf. the chapter on Indi- 
vidualism). It remains to be seen whether 
new forces will arise capable of bringing some 
order into this chaos and checking the process 
of disruption. 

Rudolf Eucken and Benjamin Kidd 
It may be worth our while, at this point, to 
indicate a very striking analogy which exists 
between Eucken's view of civilisation and that 
of Benjamin Kidd, as expounded in Social 
Evolution. The distinguished English soci- 
ologist occupies a standpoint entirely different 
from that of the German philosopher, but this 
should only serve to make the resemblance 
more valuable. I have already (in the fore- 



HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE 95 

going chapter) referred very briefly to the 
fact that Kidd, in opposition to many other 
social students, sees the motive power of 
evolution to lie in religious and ethical truths 
resting upon a " super-rational " foundation 
and imposing themselves upon men with a 
compelling spiritual force. It is this force 
which, in his opinion, enables men to make all 
those sacrifices which are essential to the pro- 
gress of society, but which have no ground in 
the individual reason. The latter is, indeed, 
an enemy of progress except in so far as it acts 
as an instrument of the former ; for if the 
individual and his intellect become independent 
of the controlling spiritual force, the result is 
moral and racial decay. There appears to be 
a close connection between this point of view 
and that indicated by Eucken in such a state- 
ment as the following {Main Currents, p. 301) : — 

" Civilisation is genuine only in as far as it pre- 
serves its relationship with the basic spiritual life 
and serves its development, and becomes false as 
soon as it subordinates itself to the aims of the mere 
man and drags spiritual life down with it to the same 
low level. The conflict between these two forces, 
spirit and man, runs through the whole of history 
and forces us to perceive in it something other than 
a pure triumph of spirit." 

In Chapter IV. of Social Evolution we have 



96 RUDOLF EUCKEN : 

a^brilliant and impressive account of the great 
historical struggle between superhuman reli- 
gion with its demands, on the one hand, and 
the '' self-assertive rationalism " of the indi- 
vidual on the other ; and in reference to this 
world-conflict Kidd says : — 

" Goethe was not speaking with a poet's exaggera- 
tion, but with a scientific insight in advance of his 
time when he asserted of it, that it is ' the deepest, 
nay, the one theme of the world's history to which 
all others are subordinate ' " (p. 98). 

The Function of Religion in the Evolution of 
Society 

Benjamin Kidd's point of view is neither 
theological, philosophical, nor psychological, 
but purely and simply sociological. He studies 
religion only as a social phenomenon. It is 
his aim to investigate its function in the 
evolution of society. Commencing with the 
observation that every people in the history 
of the world has been profoundly influenced 
by general belief in some description of super- 
natural power, he enquires as to the reason of 
this outstanding fact, and concludes that it 
would be preposterous to dismiss such a 
widespread and deeply influential phenomenon 
as so much foolish aberration ; such a Hght 



HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE 97 

treatment of the matter would, he asserts, not 
only be absurd but highly unscientific, for 
biology itself should teach us that all conduct, 
whether of plants or animals, has some use, 
some relation to the great work of evolution — ► 
why, then, should man be ranked as an excep- 
tion ? His final judgment is that '' religion 
is a form of behef providing an ultra-rational 
sanction for that large class of conduct in the 
individual where his interests and the interests 
of the social organism are antagonistic, and by 
which the former are rendered subordinate to 
the latter. . . ." By '' ultra-rational " Kidd 
evidently means practically the same thing as 
non-utilitarian, and he is thus in entire accord 
with Eucken in conceiving the real motive 
forces of civilisation to be neither intellectual 
nor utilitarian. That Kidd should see all 
through the ages such abundant evidence of 
the potency of an ultra-rational force is a very 
powerful independent testimony in favour of 
the truth of Eucken's concept of a spiritual 
life elevated above man and yet compelling 
him to action. 

Life and the Individual 

At the present time the conception of an 
antithesis between the absolute principle of 

R.E. H 



98 RUDOLF EUCKEN : 

life and the unrestrained individuality of each 
particular being appears to be very much to 
the front. Dealing with the matter from a 
psycho-physiological point of view, Stanley 
Hall has much to say concerning the trans- 
mutation of individual instincts into social 
and spiritual forces, and his educational work 
is concerned, in the main, with the sub- 
ordination of the individual to super-individual 
norms (see Adolescence). A fresh light is 
thrown upon the same central fact by Bergson, 
with his view of evolution as a creative work. 
He, too, lays great weight upon the continual 
antithesis between the narrow, human stand- 
point of the individual and the demands of the 
life-process : — 

*' Life in general is mobility itself ; particular 
manifestations of life accept this mobility reluctantly 
and constantly lag behind. It is always going ahead ; 
they want to mark time. ... It might be said that 
life tends toward the utmost possible action, but 
that each species prefers to contribute the slightest 
possible effort." — Creative Evolution, p. 134. 

In its practical essence, this statement of 
Bergson's is almost equivalent to Kidd's 
doctrine of the dif&culty which the individual 
finds in accepting the burden which the task 
of evolution lays upon him ; and the parallel 



HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE 99 

with Eucken's conviction of the absolute 
inadequacy of any social system which does 
not accept super-individual norms is obvious. 
Eucken and Kidd may, in a sense, be looked 
upon as complementary. The former supplies 
the metaphysical and religious element which 
the latter has expressly avoided, while the 
latter, by confining himself strictly to the 
standpoint of empirical sociology, is able to 
give the matter a perfectly concrete form. 
Working thus from opposite poles, they come 
to one and the same conclusion ; namely, 
that a basis of super-rational and superhuman 
belief is absolutely essential to the stability 
and progress of society. 

B. Kidd and the Ethico-Religious Basis of 
Society 

Moreover Kidd arrives at a view of the 
development of society which is closely 
analogous to Eucken's doctrine of the syn- 
tagma. On p. 291 of Social Evolution we 
read : — 

" Regarding our social systems as organic growths, 
there appears to be a close analogy between their 
life-history and that of forms of organic life in 
general. We have, on the one side, in the ethical 
systems upon which they are founded, the develop- 

H 2 



100 RUDOLF EUCKEN: 

mental force which sets in motion that life-con- 
tinuing, constructive process which physiologists 
call anabolism. On the other side, and in conflict 
with it, we have in the self-assertive rationalism of 
the individual, the tendency — ^by itself disintegrating 
and destructive — known as kataboKsm. In a social 
system, as in any other organism, the downward 
stage towards decay is probably commenced when 
the katabohc tendency begins to progressively over- 
balance the anabolic tendency." 

It is not, in the first place, by means 
of any intellectual superiority that one ethico- 
religious system triumphs over another. The 
victory is to the greatest development of life- 
energy. Kidd points out that those nations 
and sections of society which are able to 
maintain and increase their numbers will 
gradually rise above those which tend to 
decrease, and in their rise they will give a 
wider and wider expression to the beliefs upon 
which they are based. It is true that numbers 
do not in themselves create spiritual values. 
But on the other hand, no ethical or religious 
construction of life can express itself except 
through a population in whom it works. We 
rightly set spirit above matter ; but we must 
yet acknowledge that the spirit cannot realise 
itself upon the earthly plane save through 
matter. However little Eucken may have 



HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE loi 

had such an application in view, there is an 
obvious connection between Kidd's treat- 
ment of the population question and such a 
statement as we find on p. 92 of Main Cur- 
rents : — 

" In spiritual conflicts it is not isolated intellectual 
considerations that carry the day, but basic life- 
processes and the content of the spiritual reaUty 
which they comprehend ; '* 

or that quoted at the commencement of the 
chapter on intellectualism. 

The EthicO'Religious Aspect of the 
Pop^ilation Question 
When thus regarded, the enormous decline 
in the birth-rate which has taken place of recent 
years in the educated classes of Great Britain 
is seen to possess a significance which is not 
only social, political and economic, but philo- 
sophical and religious ; for these classes will 
carry with them into extinction the moral and 
religious beliefs of which they are the repre- 
sentatives.^ Of this process the United 

^ The true significance of this decline has been largely masked 
by a failure to separate it from the general fall. The general 
rate has gone down from 36 per 1,000 in 1876 to 23*5 per 1,000 
in 1913 ; but the rate in the educated classes, taking the same 
years, has dropped from about 32 per 1,000 to something like 
10 per 1,000 (a number probably well below their death rate). 
The serious dysgenic effect of this fall is obvious, and needs no 
comment. The popular belief that this is solely an economic 



102 RUDOLF EUCKEN: 

States affords a good example : the decay of 
Puritanism in that country has been brought 
about not so much by any intellectual rejec- 
tion of its beliefs, as by the almost universal 
drastic restriction of the family amongst 
the Puritan stocks, which are thus being 
'' swamped '' by the other European stocks 
who came into the community later and who 
are much more prolific ; the victory has been 
not to '' intellectual considerations,'' but to 
'' basic hfe-processes " and the type of 
'' spiritual reality '' they express. Or, view- 
ing the matter from Kidd's standpoint, the 
ethical system of modern American Puritanism 
has not been able to resist the disintegrating 
C' katabolic '') effect of a self-assertive ration- 
alism (operating in the form of Malthusianism), 
with the result that it is being displaced by 
other systems which are more successful in 
subordinating the individual to ethical norms. 

Remarkable Effects of the Movement of Popula- 
tion in the Anglo-Saxon World 
Along these lines there is room for much 
fruitful speculation. The future develop- 
ments of ethics and religion may depend, to an 

question will not easily be accepted if it be remembered that 
this decline has coincided with a continual and rapid increase 
in the wealth of the very classes in question. 



HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE 103 

extent which has not yet been realised, upon 
the growth and decay of particular races and 
sections of society. If, for example, we regard 
the educated Protestant Anglo-Saxon as the 
bearer of a specific type of belief and morality, 
there can be no doubt (even supposing the 
present birth-rate to be maintained, which 
seems improbable) that this type is destined 
virtually to disappear within the next four or 
five generations ; for throughout the entire 
English-speaking world the birth-rate in the 
more highly educated classes is probably more 
than 20 per cent, below the death-rate. Mr. 
and Mrs. Whetham, in their valuable work 
The Family and the Nation, distinguish, in a 
hereditary sense, two sections of English 
society, upgoing and downgoing ; the former 
are those which average more than four 
children per family, the latter those which 
average less than that number.^ The up- 
going portion consists, in the main, of Roman 
Catholics (in all social grades), some foreign 
stocks, and the poorer classes in general. 
Who can foresee the extent of the intellectual 
and religious changes which this state of 

1 According to expert sociological opinion, four children will 
just maintain a constant population. Improved hygienic con- 
ditions would lower this figure a little ; but the popular idea 
that two or three children maintains the population is erroneous. 



104 RUDOLF EUCKEN: 

affairs will bring about ? For the growing 
sections will raise into a position of ascendancy 
the special types of belief and morality which 
they represent ; while there will be a continual 
elimination of those constructions of spiritual 
life associated with the dwindling sections. 
Moreover, these changes may well take place 
with great rapidity. It appears that the 
ordinary English middle-class home contains, 
on an average, not more than two children 
(Mr. Bernard Shaw made a census in London, 
and obtained an average of 1*25 ; but this is 
lower than the figures given by others) ; the 
Catholic home of a similar class, on the other 
hand, shows an average of about five children. 
Upon the basis of these figures we obtain the 
astounding result that after no more than four 
generations 1,000 couples taken from the former 
section will be represented by only about 190 
individuals, which amounts almost to extinc- 
tion; while 1,000 Catholic couples will have 
given rise to no fewer than some 6,000 
descendants ! These figures (though only 
roughly worked out) will convey some idea of 
the startling changes in belief and thought 
which may take place as a result of a differen- 
tial birth-rate operating even for a few genera- 
tions only. If we agree with the foregoing 



/ 



HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE 105 

view that the vitaHty of any particular body 
of people is ultimately an expression of the 
spiritual reality upon which their existence is 
grounded, we shall find ourselves led to the 
conclusion that the Anglo-Saxon race, on its 
upper levels, is no longer based upon an 
adequate spiritual foundation. The bearing 
of the economic question upon the vitality of 
the race does not invalidate this point of view ; 
for what is the economic situation but a pro- 
duct of the moral and spiritual state of the 
people as a whole ? 

The reader must not too hastily assume that 
the foregoing statistical paragraphs are in any 
sense a digression. It is precisely when 
brought into contact with the facts of life that 
philosophy becomes real. And such facts as 
we have ]ust considered (though not dealt 
with by Eucken himself) will make us perceive, 
in no uncertain fashion, that modern culture, 
if it is to continue, demands new sources of 
spiritual life, and a new positive construction 
of morality. 



Man as the Slave of Civilisation 

One of the most immediate difficulties in the 
way of any reconstruction of civilisation upon 



io6 RUDOLF EUCKEN: 

a spiritual basis is the enormous resistance 
offered by the great network of almost 
mechanical forces which surround the modern 
man from cradle to grave. The last two or 
three generations have seen an incalculable 
increase in the complexity of business and 
social life. On every hand a process of 
*' speeding-up '' has been at work. Whether 
life has become deeper and more significant, 
or even more enjoyable, is, to say the least of 
it, highly problematical ; but no man could 
deny that it has become more rapid. In fact, 
so severe is the pressure of present-day life 
that more than ever before civilisation has 
become not man's servant, but his master. 
The modern man has become a cog in a great 
machine, which runs blindly on with merciless 
and ever-increasing rapidity, and as it revolves 
crushes, between its iron rollers, the spiritual 
values by which men live, a machine which 
serves no purpose higher than the production 
of a vast material wealth that only too often 
demoralises those whom it enriches. The 
division of almost every kind of work into a 
large number of highly speciaHsed activities 
has played a great part in this degradation of 
life to a mechanical level ; the individual 
specialist has to occupy himself so exclusively 



HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE 107 

with some tiny branch of a subject that he is 
apt to lose all sense of his work having any con- 
nection with life as a whole. He is only too 
likely to become one-sided and dehumanised. 
The modern worker, whether manual or 
intellectual, is rarely in a position to exercise 
genuine self-activity, to express his personality 
in his work ; he is continually being pushed 
along by forces over which he has no control ; 
he is no longer a free man, but a slave to his 
environment. He is so unremit tingly marched 
along by a routine of outward cares and 
amusements that he has literally neither time 
nor strength to ask himself where he is going ; 
nor, indeed, for concentration on any sort of 
inward life. The multitude of labour-saving 
devices which have been called into being of 
recent years should have had the effect of 
moderating the strain involved in carrying on 
the work of the community. But they appear 
to have operated in the contrary direction. 
The typewriter, for example, instead of 
enabling the business man to write his 
letters with greater facility, has merely had 
the effect of compelling him to write more 
letters than were formerly necessary. By 
a curious paradox, the more machinery we 
invent for saving us time and trouble, the 



io8 RUDOLF EUCKEN : 

more strenuous and restless our lives 
become ! 

The Over-pressure of Modern Life 

The increased burden which the conditions 
of modern life impose upon the nervous 
resources of the individual is a matter which 
bears very directly upon the problems of 
philosophy and religion, and merits far more 
attention than is accorded to it. The man of 
to-day, in the first place, goes through an 
education which is so much more complex 
and varied than that of former times, that if 
it were not for the fact that nothing he does 
is done really thoroughly, it would be im- 
possible for him to survive the strain. As a 
rule, however, he does survive, carrying with 
him into life a more or less undigested and 
uncorrelated accumulation of information, 
and a mind, in perhaps most cases, almost 
totally devoid of every spark of genuine 
interest and enthusiasm. In the course of 
his business or professional career he will 
probably write ten times as many letters and 
have ten times as many interviews as did his 
great-grandfather, and, if his position is one 
of responsibility, be called upon to bear an 
immensely greater load of worry and anxiety. 



HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE 109 

In his leisure hours he will read perhaps a 
dozen times as many books, in addition to 
innumerable papers and magazines, attend 
two or three times as many meetings, concerts 
and social functions, and travel twenty times 
as far, as compared with the same great- 
grandfather. Throughout his entire existence 
his mind is beset by an unceasing stream of 
external sensations and interests ; almost 
every minute it is called upon to absorb some 
new impression, to adjust itself to meet some 
fresh demand. And lastly, the modern man 
lives in a general atmosphere of economic, 
social, ethical and religious insecurity which 
must in itself exercise a deeply disturbing 
influence upon the higher nerve centres. 

Can it be pretended for a moment that all 
the foregoing does not affect the character, 
health and mental equilibrium of the modern 
individual ? Are we to believe that his nervous 
system is so much stronger than those of his for- 
bears that it can endure with impunity a strain so 
immensely greater than anything to which man- 
kind has previously been accustomed ? 

Modern Life neglects the Soul 

Much of the depression and spiritual exhaus- 
tion which makes itself felt in the Hf e of to-day 



no RUDOLF EUCKEN: 

must no doubt be laid at the door of this 
pace and overstrain. A type of civilisa- 
tion has been developed which neglects 
man's inner life in the pursuit of material 
things and in the cultivation of external 
interests : as Eucken writes on p. 107 of 
Main Currents : — 

" The nineteenth century, more than any other 
epoch, enlarged the whole aspect of life and improved 
human conditions. One would have expected it to 
close with a proud and joyful consciousness of 
strength. The fact that it did not do so points to an 
error in the type of life which dominated the period. 
This error is to be found in the desire of realism to 
eliminate the soul. And the soul will not allow itself 
to be eliminated/* 

We have fallen into the false habit of 
looking upon all technical improvement, all 
accumulation of wealth and all increase in the 
complexity of hfe, as in itself a gain, quite apart 
from its effect upon man's inner life — and yet 
it is in this latter alone that his happiness can 
exist. This mistaken attitude of mind, which 
has been encouraged by the decay of religion, 
the neglect of moral training, and the absurd 
over-valuation of all the external improve- 
ments which technical science has made 
possible, has led to the erection of a great 



HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE iii 

system of civilisation which presses with an 
intolerable weight upon human nature : — 

" Modern civilisation in its most highly organised 
forms has elaborated a system to which the delicate 
fibre of mind and body is unable to respond," 

writes Mr. C. F. G. Masterman in The 
Condition of England ; and the statistics of 
suicide, insanity and nervous disease are at 
hand to corroborate him.^ 

The Revolt of the Individual 

As the real state of affairs, the true position 
of man under our present civihsation, has 
gradually become more and more patent, 
there has arisen a spirit of revolt : — 

" Our own age is making it continually and 
increasingly obvious that this self-abandonment of 
man to civilisation is absolutely impossible of 
accomplishment. Above all the speed and racket 
of the machinery of civilisation there breaks out with 
ever-increasing loudness the call for the furtherance 
and development of the living man, for the build- 
ing-up of the soul, for the salvation of the spiritual 
self/' — Main Currents, p. 296. 

* The ratio of insane persons to the total population has 
increased by g8-8 per cent, during the last fifty-three years. 
This may, it is true, be due to some extent to the greater pro- 
lificity of *' bad stocks " under modern conditions ; but even 
admitting this, the unnatural pressure of life is a most important 
factor, since it may greatly enhance inherited weakness which 
would otherwise lie dormant. 



112 RUDOLF EUCKEN: 

This revolt makes itself felt not only as a 
demand for a genuine spiritual reality, but 
also in the form of an exaggerated subjec- 
tivism. The individual desires to shake off 
the fetters of a civilisation which he feels to 
be mechanical and oppressive, and to develop 
his personality in freedom. It becomes his 
aim to '' live his life out '' heedless of the 
traditional standards of conduct ; and the 
ideals of duty and discipline sink entirely 
into the background, to be replaced by a per- 
verted conception of individual freedom. This 
tendency reaches its culminating point in 
Nietzsche, and is very strongly in evidence in 
the works of Bernard Shaw ; it colours, also, a 
great deal of the feminist literature of the day 
— cf. Ellen Key — and may prove a serious 
danger to the women's movement, involving, 
as it does, the disintegration of all positive 
standards of morality, and the encouragement 
of subjectivity and egoism. 

Subjectivism 

If the feminist movement is to make an 
effective protest against the emptiness and 
souUessness of civilisation, and to realise its 
own profound possibilities, it must at all costs 
base itself upon some more solid founda- 



HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE 113 

tion than a mere vague, subjective idea of 
'' freedom." Influences of this description 
are indeed clearly to be traced throughout the 
whole art and literature of the day ; and some 
of the recent exhibitions of so-called post- 
impressionist art have given us a forcible idea 
of the morbid extremes to which art can pro- 
ceed when it turns away from positive reality. 
The fatal objection to all movements of this 
description is that they dissolve the idea of 
truth. Refusing to recognise any objective 
and authoritative reality, whether in art, 
morality or religion, those who live and work 
after this fashion will inevitably find them- 
selves reduced to the position of elaborating 
their own religion and philosophy. Each 
individual now evolves his own necessarily 
one-sided view of life. And this has the 
effect of accentuating the very evils which this 
tendency set out to avoid. For the dis- 
appearance from life of any generally accepted 
basis of thought and action, of any central 
meeting-ground for the whole community, 
obviously renders the individual less than 
ever capable of being elevated above the 
mechanical routine of his work and deprives 
life as a whole of any spiritual meaning. 
Each man is now able to sink into a narrow 

R,E. I 



114 RUDOLF EUCKEN: 

rut of his own in religion and morality as 
well as in daily work. Such is the gain of 
subjectivism. 

True and False CulUire 

From considering this aspect of life we pass 
by a natural transition to the problem of 
culture. For it is precisely the absence of a 
central standard of values which is the prime 
cause of culture having come to signify a mere 
polishing of the mind, a more or less superficial 
acquaintance with what is interesting and 
piquant in the art, music and literature of 
the day. Culture has sunk to mean a mere 
embroidering of a conventional life which rests 
all the while on a utilitarian basis. It bears, 
under present conditions, no actual relation- 
ship to the real problems of our civilisation. It 
performs no indispensable function in our lives. 

'* We have become insecure with regard to all our 
ideals, nay, with regard to our own being ; we no 
longer draw upon a common groundwork of con- 
victions, of uniting, directing, elevating forces. In 
spite of all subjective activity, an inner decline of 
life is unavoidable if this uncertainty should continue 
to spread/' — Main Currents, p. 306. 

In this brief quotation we have the key to 
the failure of our present-day culture. The 



HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE 115 

lack of a positive standard of values paralyses 
culture in its vital nerve. Let us consider an 
example from the literary sphere : a novelist 
wishes to create a strong tragic effect, and to 
that end he works out a plot in which a 
woman of high character and sensitive feelings 
marries a man who subsequently betrays his 
country and decamps with another woman ; 
in this case the author relies upon the sym- 
pathy of his readers being aroused on behalf of 
the suffering wife. But upon what will this 
sympathy depend ? Obviously upon the con- 
viction that it is a man's bounden duty to be 
loyal to his country and that his disloyalty 
would cause him to forfeit the respect of his 
wife ; and upon the conviction of the sacred- 
ness of the marriage bond. These failing, the 
story would lose its point. No literature deal- 
ing with any of the deeper things of life can 
make a universal appeal in the absence of 
generally acknowledged convictions ; a man 
who does not believe in patriotism will not be 
moved by the account of a national betrayal, 
and the tragedy of adultery will fall very flat 
in the minds of readers who are disciples of the 
'' new morality 'M If an author or an artist is 
to work upon the public there must either 
exist, or there must be created, an inner unity 

I 2 



ii5 RUDOLF EUCKEN: 

of conviction. Where there is no common 
thought-world there are no points of contact 
between author and reader, or artist and 
spectator. 

Philosophy Indispensable 

It may be predicted with the utmost con- 
fidence that the modern world will not 
experience a genuine literary and artistic 
revival until it recovers a philosophy of life 
carrying with it a standard of values. The 
vital connection which exists between art and 
philosophy is illustrated by the significant 
fact that perhaps a majority of the most con- 
spicuous figures in the modern literary world 
have been, in the first place, reHgious and 
moral prophets rather than artists ; consider, 
for example, Carlyle, Ruskin, Tolstoy, Ibsen, 
Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, Bernard Shaw and 
G. K. Chesterton. 

A Return to an Inner Life Necessary 

The question will no doubt be asked : 
Along what path must we then advance if 
we are to overcome the difiiculties of the 
present situation ? 

From the standpoint of Eucken's philosophy 
there can be no manner of doubt as to the 



HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE 117 

answer. At a period of doubt and disintegra- 
tion, when humanity was almost despairing 
of finding a purpose in Hfe, there came, in the 
shape of Christianity, a new revelation of 
spiritual reality, a new valuation of life. 
Man then discovered within himself pro- 
fundities the existence of which had previously 
hardly been suspected. Following upon this 
re-birth, there was developed a new syntagma, 
giving rise to a new system of morality and a 
new type of civilisation. 

If we are to be led out of our modern 
difficulties, it will be by a similar awakening of 
the inner man. In the midst of our manifold 
external activities we have lost sight of the 
ultimate significance of life itself. In England 
our necessary daily activities, our ceaseless 
pursuit of wealth, our restless pleasure-seeking 
which fills up every moment of spare time, 
have robbed us of almost every opportunity 
for an inner deepening of life. The rush for 
bread and the rush for amusement absorbs the 
energy of the population. The average work- 
ing Englishman has no living contact with any 
uniting moral and spiritual reality. We know 
that since the churches ceased to hold the 
masses and to give them some authoritative 
guidance, no other teaching body has come 



ii8 RUDOLF EUCKEN: 

forward to perform their work — even along 
lines however different — nor has there been any 
development of inner life such as might tempt 
us to look upon this task of orientation as 
having become superfluous. 

NorstrOm Quoted 

The full danger of this situation has been 
forcibly and eloquently described by a thinker 
who has been much under Eucken's influence 
— ^the vSwedish professor, Vitalis Norstrom. 
In his book Das Tausendjahrige Reich (p. 141), 
he maintains that the significance of life 

" is very intimately connected with the deepening 
which life acquires by reason of the consciousness 
that there exists a real but superhuman unity which 
operates in Hfe, and that man, more especially in his 
freedom and in his moral, social and religious feelings 
and actions, and in general in all that goes to make 
his rational personahty, finds points of contact and 
connection with this unity. This deepening can 
take place only through such consciousness."^ 

1 Of. " The absence of a uniting principle to fall back upon 
can no longer be ignored ; only a superior unity can convert 
life into self-life and thus enable us to make it truly our own. 
We cannot fail to be conscious of spiritual emptiness in the 
midst of an overwhelming wealth of impressions, and of uncer- 
tainty about life as a whole side by side with so much certainty 
in details. Under these circumstances, all spiritual life and the 
whole meaning and value of our existence become subject to 
doubt. The ground beneath our feet becomes totally insecure. 



HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE 119 

The Metaphysical Question must he faced 

Eucken seeks most urgently to convince us 
that there can be no solution of the problem of 
civilisation save through an acceptance and 
overcoming of the metaphysical difficulty. 
Civilisation is the affair of man. And what is 
man ? We cannot arrange his affairs for him 
until this question has been answered. If we 
agree with the great Jena philosopher that 
man is not in reality himself until he is a 
participator in this spiritual unity, we must 
be driven with him to reject every attempt to 
ground civilisation upon a naturalistic basis. 
In placing our hopes in this or that reform, or, 
in general, in any sort or kind of mere improve- 
ment of man's natural existence, we shall find 
ourselves utterly deceived. The human task 
is to discover a new life. And this life can be 
based only upon a positive re-birth into the 
spiritual world. With our fulcrum in this 
independent unity, we are then able to exert 
a leverage upon the whole world of matter ; 
we can then attempt, in Professor Boyce 
Gibson's phrasing, '' a reconstitution of the 
whole in the light of the values of the upper 
level." 

It is imperatively necessary to go back to the foundations of 
our existence and -fight a battle for the preservation of the human 
soul,'* — Main Currents, pp. 128-9. 



CHAPTER IX 

SOCIALISM 

Social Influences in the Modern World 

During the last few generations a host of 
causes have worked together to render man 
more and more dependent upon his surround- 
ings and upon the community in which he 
Hves. The study of nature has led him to see 
himself as no more than a tiny and apparently 
helpless fragment of an immense whole, which 
appears to determine every detail of his 
character and every incident of his life. The 
development of modern industry, with its 
intricate network of mutual relationships and 
its countless ramifications, has inevitably 
brought with it a new feeling of solidarity, of 
the dependence of the individual upon the 
community in general. The studies of modern 
sociologists have shown in striking fashion 
how men and women are moulded by social 
influences, to what an extent they are the 
outcome of their milieu. Within recent times, 
too, there have come into being great national 



RUDOLF EUCKEN. 121 

systems of education ; and these have no 
doubt powerfully contributed towards the 
suppression of original and independent types 
of character. An increased study of the laws 
of heredity has brought out the dependence 
of the child upon his forbears. The un- 
precedented improvement of the means of 
communication, the invention of railways, 
steamers, motors, telegraphs, etc., and the 
enormous development of printing and the 
transmission of news, has brought men nearer 
and nearer to one another both physically and 
mentally, and has tended very powerfully to 
rub down individuality. The rapid growth 
in the power of the state during the last half 
century or so (a growth which has come about 
through a multitude of reasons, amongst 
which we may mention the necessity for 
Governmental intervention in the economic 
world, the general complexity of modern 
social life, demanding as it does a guiding 
centre, and the enormous expansion of arma- 
ments) has tended more and more to deprive 
the individual of his freedom of action. Last, 
but not least, I may mention the popularisa- 
tion of philosophical and economic views 
favouring state control and the socialisation 
of life, and depreciating the value of the 



122 RUDOLF EUCKEN: 

individual (consider the influence of Spinoza, 
Hegel, Comte, Marx, and Lassalle), a process 
which has gone on side by side with a decay 
of the more definite and personal forms of 
religion. 

As a result of these and other causes the 
modern world has developed, as we all know^ 
a strong socialistic tendency. This reveals 
itself, not only in the shape of the socialistic 
movement itself, properly so-called, but in a 
general trend towards the construction of 
society on a social basis, and in this form it 
has affected all political parties and to some 
extent permeated the entire community. 

Eucken's Treatment of the Problem 

It should be understood that the problem 
is approached by Eucken, in the main, from 
the philosophical and ethical standpoints — 
aspects of the matter which, in the popular 
discussion of socialism, are left far too much 
in the background. In Main Currents (p. 
352), Eucken explains that under the social 
construction of hfe : — 

" The meaning of ethics is sought in achievement 
for the benefit of the social environment, in altruism ; 
the training of the individual for the purposes of the 
community becomes the goal of education ; art 



HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE 123 

makes social conditions the chief object of its work 
and aims at serving the widest circles ; science 
endeavours to study man, not as an isolated indi- 
vidual, but ' socio-psychologically,' from the point 
of view of society as a whole ; while pragmatism 
even makes capacity for advancing the welfare of 
humanity the standard of truth itself": 

and it is with socialism in this broad sense 
that we shall be more especially concerned. 

The Struggle for Liberty 

A glance at history would alone suffice to 
show us that the entire absorption of the 
individual in society, which this movement 
signifies when carried to its logical conclusion, 
cannot be contemplated as a satisfactory end. 
Many of the greatest battles in the history of 
the human race — both in a political and in 
a philosophical sense — have been fought to 
secure the physical and spiritual independence 
of the individual. From being no more than 
one of a herd, an undistinguished unit with 
little or no inner life, man has slowly, labori- 
ously, and often heroically struggled to secure 
an independent personality. Without this 
struggle he would have remained a mere 
higher animal, a fragment of nature, a helpless 
link in the great chain of cause and effect, a 
being without will, purpose or initiative ; in 



124 RUDOLF EUCKEN: 

Nietzsche's phrase, " a man of the herd/' 
Possibly the greatest of all the rich gifts 
bestowed upon humanity by the Christian 
religion was an altogether new sense of per- 
sonal worth and responsibility, an incompar- 
ably deeper consciousness of the vast possi- 
bilities latent in the spirit of the individual 
man, a new valuation of the human soul : 
mediaeval asceticism, notwithstanding certain 
exaggerations, emphasised the fact that man 
has a value in himself, that he is more than a 
sexual animal, more than a mere unit in a 
natural society, that he is able with heroic 
self-denial to maintain an absolutely non- 
utilitarian ideal of life in the face of all the 
opposition of the natural level. In modern 
philosophy, too, we see a further development 
of the same principle, a further building-up 
of personal values. Through the effort and 
sacrifice of innumerable generations, man's 
inner life has acquired an ever larger and 
deeper content. There can be no doubt that 
one of the most difficult problems of our 
modern civilisation will be the reconciliation 
of the independence of the individual (not 
merely in the economic, but in the intellectual, 
moral and spiritual sense) with the ever- 
increasing demands of society. One thing is 



HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE 125 

certain, says Eucken, namely, that it would 
be an irreparable disaster if the life of the 
individual, with its spirituality and inner 
independence, became merged in the deaden- 
ing utilitarianism of a merely social civilisation. 

Modern Social Tendencies and the Restriction 
of Liberty 

Mr. G. K. Chesterton has accurately de- 
scribed much of the social legislation of our 
time as a continuous process of the restriction 
of choice. The ordinary citizen's sphere of 
free personal decision dwindles year by year. 
First one right vanishes, then another. It is 
not many years since every man was free to 
educate his children as he thought right : 
now they are taken from him and forced 
through a system of training over which he 
has no effective control and which is often 
(as in the case of the secular schools of France 
in their relation to Catholic parents) directly 
opposed to his dearest convictions. At 
present he is still allowed to marry whom he 
will : but it is a question how long he may 
expect to retain his liberty even in this region. 
There can be no doubt that if the man in the 
street could be shown a complete list of all 
the opportunities for free action which were 



126 RUDOLF EUCKEN: 

once his and are his no longer, he would be 
astounded at its length and scope. It would 
be quite fair to state that nearly all, if not 
actually all, the legislative reforms which 
have been made in this country during the 
past decade or so (by either party — Con- 
servative or Liberal) have involved some 
curtailment of the liberty of the individual : 
(" Whether the political system tends towards 
democracy or aristocracy is of little con- 
sequence in this connection/') The same 
process is seen at work throughout the 
industrial world. The present-day workman 
no longer fashions a whole clock, a whole 
boot, a whole chair, or even a whole pin. He 
makes, usually with the aid of machinery, 
some tiny portion of the complete article. 
Such a man can have no conceivable liberty 
of action. He can have no possible scope for 
the expression of his personality in the work 
of his hands. It will be universally admitted 
that this reduction of work to a colourless 
routine must injuriously affect the spiritual 
life of the worker ; nor will it be free of 
pernicious results to those who buy and use 
the soulless articles thus turned out.^ 

1 Women and liberty. — I cannot resist the temptation to call 
attention, at this juncture, to the exceedingly obvious fact (to 
which large masses of people seem to have rendered themselves 



HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE 127 

Society cannot produce Spiritual Life 

In strict accordance with the basic con- 
victions of activism, Eucken lays stress, in the 
first place, on the fact that society does not 

blind) that at the present time women working at home are 
almost the only people in the community — or at any rate on 
its lower levels — who still retain any real personal freedom. 
A woman, even a poor woman, may follow her own bent in the 
arrangement of her house, in the training of her children, in 
the preparation of meals, and in her dealings with tradesmen ; 
her field for individual action is, speaking relatively, very 
wide. Her husband, on the other hand, in a large majority of 
cases, is condemned to a life of monotonous and absolutely 
impersonal work, whether manual or intellectual. He cannot, 
under present conditions, have more than a fraction of the 
opportunity for intelUgent activity which falls to the lot of 
his wife. 

G. K. Chesterton quoted. — "The woman does work which is 
in some small degree creative and individual. She can put the 
flowers or the furniture in fancy arrangements of her own. 
I fear the bricklayer cannot put the bricks in fancy arrange- 
ments of his own, without disaster to himself and others. If 
the woman is only putting a patch into a carpet, she can choose 
the thing with regard to colour. ... A woman cooking may not 
always cook artistically ; still she can cook artistically. She 
can introduce a personal and imperceptible alteration into the 
composition of a soup. The clerk is not encouraged to introduce 
a personal and imperceptible alteration into the figures in a 
ledger." — G. K. Chesterton, All Things Considered, p. 103. 
That women, in the name of freedom and a wider development, 
should clamorously desire to leave a sphere of work which offers 
very considerable opportunities for the exercise of personal 
creative activity, and much real scope for emotional and aesthetic 
development, in order to become absolutely impersonal cogs 
in the great machine of modern commercial life is an aberration 
so extraordinary that it is in itself quite sufficient to convince 
any thoughtful person of the entirely mistaken character of the 
modern development of civilisation. It has been suggested by 



128 RUDOLF EUCKEN: 

produce spiritual life. It is the spiritual life 
which is the formative influence of society. 
And the creative activity of the individual is 
the fountain-head of this life as it manifests 
itself within the limits of our present exist- 
ence. We should never permit ourselves to 
forget that no organisation of life can itself 
do anything more than utilise the waters 
which flow from this original source. If the 
vigour, independence and originative capacity 
of the individual be weakened or destroyed, 
society as a body is undermined. What should 
we say of persons in charge of a picnic if they 
concerned themselves solely with a most 
elaborate system for the best possible prepara- 
tion and distribution of sandwiches, but at the 
same time forgot to provide the ham, the 
mustard, and the bread-and-butter ? Yet 
this is precisely analogous to the conduct of 
those who would develop the outward organi- 
sation of life while overlooking the care for the 
actual personal inner life itself, in which alone 
our existence finds its nourishment. This 
personal life depends upon spiritual values ; 

a well-known psychologist that the " flight from the home " 
is due, perhaps, mainly to the drying up of those sources of 
inward energy which can alone inspire personal service and 
open up its depths. The non-spiritual type of character will 
always prefer intellectual to personal work — it is so much easier 1 



HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE 129 

and these cannot be given by any merely social 
construction of life.^ 



Eucken rejects Utilitarianism 

It is, in Eucken's opinion, fatal to make our 
inner life dependent upon any such utilitarian 
idea as " the welfare of society," an idea which 
cannot in itself afford any definite standards 
and is unable to distinguish clearly between 
good and evil : — 

" In spite of its immense activity and immeasur- 
able diligence this [i,e.y the social-utilitarian] type 
of life is lacking in true vigour and decision, in the 
courage to say definitely ' Yes ' or ' No.' It 
possesses no true content and meaning." {Main 
Currents, p. 354.) 

1 Cf. Herbert Spencer's Social Statics, from which I take a 
short extract (p. 63) : — 

" Whoso should think to escape the influence of gravitation 
by throwing his Hmbs into some pecuHar attitude, would not 
be more deceived than are those who hope to avoid the weight 
of their depravity by arranging themselves into this or that 
form of political organisation. Every jot of the evil must in 
one way or other be borne — consciously or unconsciously ; 
either in a shape that is recognised, or else under some disguise. 
No philosopher's stone of a constitution can produce golden 
conduct from leaden instincts. No apparatus of senators, 
judges, and police, can compensate for the want of an internal 
governing sentiment. No legislative manipulation can eke out 
an insufficient morality into a sufficient one. No administrative 
sleight of hand can save us from ourselves." From another 
standpoint, Nietzsche, too, satirised the dream of a state- 
controlled paradise. 



130 RUDOLF EUCKEN: 

What is " Social Welfare " ? 

In the midst of all the deluge of talk which 
is now poured out about the '' welfare of 
society/' it is rare to hear any serious dis- 
cussion of what, precisely, is meant by the 
term '' welfare." It is, however, almost 
beyond doubt that there is a prevailing 
tendency to conceive of this welfare as being 
secured by an ever-increasing gratification of 
man's natural desires. It is argued that 
because certain sections of the community 
have certain needs, that if these needs are 
gratified there will result an increase in the 
sum total of human happiness ; thus the 
natural man craves for ease and comfort, and 
it is assumed that as his circumstances are 
made more and more comfortable he will 
become happier and happier, an assumption 
which it would be hard to justify from an 
actual observation of life. 

The Gospel of Comfort 

Of recent years an ever-increasing body of 
people has turned away from all positive 
religion and from every metaphj^sical view of 
life, and has fallen back upon a negative idea, 
an idea which has come to be, perhaps, the 



HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE 131 

dominating conception of present-day life — 
the elimination of suffering. In every direc- 
tion we see this principle at work ; in the 
economic world there is a continual agitation 
to raise wages and to lighten work (and far be 
it from me to imply that this, in itself, is not 
necessary) ; in the scientific sphere men wage 
a successful warfare against disease, and 
operations are now performed with ease which 
would formerly have been impossible ; in the 
schoolroom and the nursery we are to have an 
easy-going, self-indulgent comfort in place of 
the old discipline and hardening, while interest 
is to replace hard work ; in the homes of the 
people the popularisation of scientific Mal- 
thusianism is to make it easy for men and 
women to secure pleasure while avoiding 
suffering and responsibility. Yet in spite of 
all this systematic elimination of suffering, the 
age is oppressed with a discontent more pro- 
found than we can trace in almost any pre- 
ceding epoch. Like all negative ideals, the 
ideal of the removal of suffering has in itself 
no positive value. Important as it may be 
to eliminate pain and hardship, this will not 
of itself enrichen or deepen life. The well-to- 
do artisans who have secured short hours and 
high wages have not for this reason found a 

K 2 



132 RUDOLF EUCKEN: 

satisfying meaning in human existence ; men 
do not experience a renewal of spiritual life 
because their appendices have been cut out ; 
the petted children of to-day, who never hear 
a harsh word, strike nearly all of us as being 
very perceptibly less happy than the little 
ones of the days of severe discipline ; and who 
could pretend to believe that the unsuffering 
childless wives who are so common in modern 
England really extract from their existence a 
deeper meaning than do their sisters who 
follow a more difficult way of life ? In the face 
of this whole tendency we shall do well to 
stamp upon our minds the saying of Eucken's : 
*' Not suffering, but spiritual destitution is 
man's worst enemy." 

Comfort gives Life no Meaning 

It may well be that we shall make immense 
strides in the overcoming of disease, pain and 
poverty, and that existence will become 
increasingly smooth and easy. Yet, at the 
same time, the general level of life, in a moral 
and spiritual sense, may steadily sink. We 
may escape suffering and effort only to fall 
victims to the still worse dangers of an endless 
ennui, an emptiness of soul in the midst of 



HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE 133 

comfort. Did not Browning, a thinker whose 
affinities with Eucken are obvious, say : 
" When pain ends gain ends too " ? And did 
not an even greater Teacher say that " whoso- 
ever will save his life shall lose it " ? It must 
be clear to every observant person that life 
does not acquire the slightest meaning or 
value merely through the possession of food, 
shelter and clothing, no matter on how 
luxurious a scale it may be lived, nor how 
much taste and thought may be expended 
upon its decoration and elaboration. How- 
ever essential it may be to render economic 
justice to all sections of the community, 
merely to raise the " standard of life " will 
not in itself make life even worth living. Can 
we forget that Tolstoy, when a middle-aged 
man, rich, healthy, successful, immensely 
talented, in the midst of his family and 
surrounded by friends, came to a halt and 
asked himself in despair the eternal question : 
'' What is the meaning of life '' ? Is it not 
a matter of common observation that persons 
in the most comfortable circumstances, freed 
from all material cares, are among the least 
happy of mankind ; and is it not a fact that 
personal suicide (as well as racial suicide) is 
most prevalent amongst those classes which 



134 RUDOLF EUCKEN : 

have the best opportunity of fulfilHng their 
wants ? ^ 

" The Rehabilitation of the Flesh *' 

Now, from the whole of the foregoing argu- 
ment we may draw a simple conclusion, 
namely, that the principle of the avoidance 
of suffering and the gratification of desire 
(which might be described in old-fashioned 
language as the " way of the natural man '') 
affords absolutely no basis whatever for any 
sort of enduring construction of life. As 
Mazzini said, the real danger of modern 
democracy is that it will end with '' the 
rehabilitation of the flesh." 



Analysis of Social-Democracy 

In Main Currents (p. 374, ff.), we are pro- 
vided with a valuable analysis of socialism 

^ As a commentary upon the modern gospel of comfort, I 
may quote a passage from Main Currents, p. 154 : " It is more 
especially true that it is through struggle alone that our life 
fathoms its full depth. Resistance alone drives it to put forth 
its whole strength and compels it to exercise its full originative 
power," Cf. also the quotations on pp. 30 and 95 of this book. 
The pursuit of comfort has, of course, only one logical end, 
namely, the extinction of the race ; for without serious discomfort 
it cannot be continued. (In the more well-to-do sections of 
New York society about 40 per cent, of the marriages ar« 
childless.) 



HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE 135 

as a definite and separate system of life (as 
distinct from the mere social tendency with 
which we have been dealing) in the form in 
which it is put forward by the Social-Demo- 
cratic Party. Eucken attributes the great 
importance to which this system has attained 
to the fact of its having resulted from the 
fusion of three movements, each of which was 
in itself formidable, namely, the democratic 
movement, the economic movement, and the 
political movement — the first demands the 
freedom and expansion of the individual man, 
the second declares the economic factor to be 
the basic one in life and deduces moral and 
spiritual values from a material basis, while 
the third glorifies the state as the foundation 
of the whole life of the community. The 
system as a whole is held together rather by 
its negative characteristics (in particular its 
opposition to all metaphysical and spiritual 
views of life) than by any logical connection 
between its component parts, which are by 
no means harmoniously combined, the demo- 
cratic demand for individual freedom consort- 
ing very ill with the belief in the all-powerful 
authority of the state. Eucken is opposed to 
each of these movements separately and to 
their resultant whole. The first he finds to be 



136 RUDOLF EUCKEN : 

false in so far as its democracy is humanistic 
and utilitarian, though he would be far from 
opposed to a democracy spiritually inter- 
preted ; the second he condemns for deriving 
the higher from the lower in materialistic 
fashion ; and in the third he perceives a most 
serious danger to personal and spiritual 
freedom. Their fusion, he declares, gives us 
a movement which is utilitarian, materialistic 
and bureaucratic. It is, moreover, if logically 
developed, essentially secular and anti- 
spiritual. 

Some Dangers of State Socialism 

It may not be out of place at this point to 
refer to some of the specific injuries which 
might be inflicted upon human culture as the 
result of a system of state socialism. The 
chief danger to be feared is the subjection of 
the spiritual life and creative genius of the 
individual to the tyranny of the majority — 
and, worse still, of a body of experts set in 
power by the majority. It may be taken for 
granted that in any thorough-going socialist 
state the government would undertake, or at 
any rate strictly control, the entire production 
of books, magazines, newspapers, pictures, 
sculpture and all other forms of art which 



HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE 137 

involve financial transactions — if it did not, 
successful authors, artists, or publishers would 
presumably be able to amass wealth and 
become capitalists ! Consequently the type 
of book produced, the character of newspaper 
permitted, even the standard of art itself, 
would become a matter of state control. And 
how would this state control be exercised ? 
Matters of this kind could not be determined 
by the people themselves en masse; they 
would therefore be handed over to various 
bodies of professional experts whose business 
it would be to decide whether or not the state 
should publish certain books, purchase certain 
pictures, or circulate certain newspapers. 
This would be nothing less than a stupendous 
tyranny. Owing to the protean nature of 
constructive socialism it is impossible to form 
any clear idea of the method by which affairs 
of this sort would be managed in the socialist 
state. But for the sake of illustration let us 
take that particular system under which, so it 
is suggested, the state should pay fixed salaries 
to the workers who make up the community — 
each worker as far as possible choosing the 
task for which he feels himself best suited. 
According to this method the state would 
have to decide, in the first place, who should 



/ 



138 RUDOLF EUCKEN : 

or should not be allowed to write books, to 
paint pictures, or to conduct newspapers. 
There would spring into being a gigantic civil 
service with endless entrance examinations. 
Under these circumstances only such types of 
literature and art could flourish as were 
pleasing to the boards of government experts, 
who would, like all experts, be the exponents 
of their own pet theories, and the foes of 
genuine originality and spontaneity. Would 
it be possible to deal creative activity a more 
deadly blow ? It is state tyranny of this type 
which Eucken has in mind when he writes : 

"We must not overlook the danger of spiritual 
unproductivity, of the strangulation of the indi- 
vidual, of a uniform and mechanical moulding of 
life." — Main Currents, p. 362. 

We are already sufficiently acquainted with 
the deadening effects of a mechanical, bureau- 
cratic control in the matter of examinations ; 
we know how the whole work of education 
suffers when subordinated to a system of 
'' results " ; and possessing such knowledge, it 
is not likely that we shall wish to see the 
system of control by examination expand 
until it embraces practically every human 
activity ! Mr. W. H. Mallock has pointed out 
with great force the dangers to the liberty of 



HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE 139 

the press which would follow upon such a 
system of state control as that outlined above. 
How, he asks, could a socialist government 
afford to subsidise papers which made it their 
object to attack the government ? Yet if such 
papers were not circulated, how could there 
be any public opposition to the ruling powers ? 
And owing to the unprecedented authority 
which would now be vested in the governing 
body, an effective and vigilant opposition 
would be more essential than it has ever been 
before in our history. 



Eucken not an Anti-Democrat 

I am well aware that in thus setting forth 
our philosopher's grounds of objection to 
socialism and the social construction of life in 
general, I have exposed him to a very grave 
misunderstanding which it is now my duty 
to remove. A hasty reader will perhaps 
already have jumped to the conclusion that 
Eucken is an anti-democrat, an enemy of the 
uplifting of the economic level of the workers, 
and one blind to the material necessities of our 
human existence. No conclusion could pos- 
sibly be further from the truth. 



140 RUDOLF EUCKEN: 

The Justification of Democracy 

In spite of all those characteristics which 
have compelled him to reject this tendency as 
a whole, as a substitute for a spiritual view 
of life, Eucken recognises in the social move- 
ment one of the most potent forces of modern 
times ; it could not possibly, he says, have 
attracted so many great and noble men, and 
exerted so deep an influence, did it not con- 
tain a kernel of genuine truth. And this 
kernel is to be sought in the altogether right 
and justifiable demand, on the part of the 
so-called lower-classes, for an increased share 
in all the manifold treasures of human culture 
and civilisation, a demand which must come 
to us with irresistible force when we consider 
the pitiful inequalities of present-day con- 
ditions, and call to mind the millions upon 
millions of men and women who are absolutely 
shut out from all participation in the secular 
and spiritual gains of the modern world. The 
painfulness of the situation is accentuated to 
an almost unbearable point by the divorce of 
wealth from social responsibility, and by the 
shameless selfishness of a large proportion of 
the upper-class population. If the reader 
remembers that at the very moment that he 



HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE 141 

peruses this page there are, in London alone, 
many thousands of men, women and children 
lacking even dry bread, and living, many of 
them, within a stone's throw of palatial 
buildings in which sit hundreds of persons who 
are literally feeding themselves to death with 
every sort and variety of expensive food, 
persons who spend their lives in a vain 
attempt to get rid of a wealth which pours in 
upon them with an almost overwhelming 
rapidity, he will realise the absolute impossi- 
bility of maintaining the present economic 
situation — for even in England the patience 
of the poor has its limits. 



The Peril of Poverty 

Eucken is a warm friend of all that would 
uplift the democracy. He is an earnest 
advocate of the right of the poor to participate 
in the material and spiritual inheritance of 
humanity, and of the need for their economic 
elevation : — 

" It remains profoundly sad that, as is usually the 
case, the one care for the preservation of life so 
greatly predominates and so overpoweringly absorbs 
men's thoughts and feelings. Life thus falls under 
a heavy yoke, which tends to produce inner littleness 



142 RUDOLF EUCKEN: 

and degradation, and to cause a dulling mediocrity 
inhibiting all fresh and free upward movement." — 
Main Currents, p. 381. 

All this, however, does not say that the 
social tendency as such, and insubordinate to 
a higher reality, is capable of affording us a 
proper orientation, and it is precisely against 
this self-sufficiency of the social view that 
Eucken raises a protesting voice. 

Eucken and Mazzini 

The fact that in this protest Eucken has 
with him one of the greatest of democrats and 
noblest of men, that great patriot Mazzini, 
should help to convince us that, notwith- 
standing his severely critical attitude towards 
the modern socialistic tendency, the Jena 
philosopher is a true friend of the people. In 
the essay called Faith and the Future, Mazzini 
wrote, referring to the democrats of his day :— 

'' Now we have no definite religious idea, no pro- 
found belief in an obligation entailed by a mission, 
no consciousness of a supreme protecting power. 
Our actual apostolate is a mere analytical oppo- 
sition; our weapons are interests, and our chief 
instrument of action is a theory of rights. . . . We 
make of the individual both the means and the 
aim. We talk of Humanity — a formula essentially 



/ 



HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE 143 

religious — and banish religion from our work. We 
talk of synthesis, and yet neglect the most power- 
ful and active element of human existence . . /* — 

lines which might well have been penned 
at the present day. And in the same essay 
he gives eloquent expression to a thought with 
which our study of Eucken has already made 
us familiar : — 

" Now fraternity does not supply any general 
social terrestrial aim ; it does not even imply the 
necessity of an aim. It has no essential and inevit- 
able relation with a purpose or intent calculated to 
harmonise the sum of human faculties and forces. 
Fraternity is undoubtedly the basis of all society, 
the first condition of social progress, but it is not 
progress ; it renders it possible — it is an indispens- 
able element of it — but it is not its definition. 
Fraternity is not inconsistent with the theory of 
movement in a circle/' 

Here we have, on the part of one of the 
greatest of the lovers of the people, that 
rejection of all mere humanism, that recog- 
nition of the need for the positive values and 
definite life-content which social culture alone 
cannot give, and that insistence upon a 
spiritual view of life as the basis of progress, 
which is so characteristic of the activistic 
philosophy. 



144 RUDOLF EUCKEN: 

Eucken and the Little Nations 

Tangible evidence of Eucken's democratic 
feeling is to be found in his consistent defence 
of the little nations against the aggressions 
of imperialism, a phase of his life-work which 
is too little known in this country. Stirring 
appeals have come from his pen on behalf of 
Finland, and he has long been a warm friend 
and admirer of the Swedish, Norwegian, and 
Danish peoples. The name of Eucken is 
loved and honoured throughout the whole of 
Finland and Scandinavia. 

Note 

The Problem of the Secular State 

It is in the form of a note to this chapter that I can 
best refer to a problem of great importance and 
interest which seems destined to come very pro- 
minently to the front in the near future. 

Under the influence of the modern social tendency, 
the state is increasingly taking it upon itself to be 
the regulator of the whole national life. It exercises 
(and still more will exercise) functions that are not 
merely economic, but moral, and even, in a sense, 
religious. Yet, at the same time, the state is 
becoming more and more secular, and we are told 
that the socialist state of the future is to be entirely 
non-religious. We are faced with the question : 
Can the state be neutral in religious and moral 



HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE 145 

questions and at the same time act as the regulator 
of the whole life of the people ? Is it not obvious 
that such a situation as this must, in the long run, 
prove impossible ? 

We in England already see the dark clouds 
gathering in preparation for the great storm which 
will soon be raging around this problem. Two of 
the most difficult questions now before the British 
public show us, on a comparatively small scale, what 
sort of opposition will have to be overcome before a 
solution can be arrived at. I mean the Education 
Question and the Marriage Question. Here we have 
two examples of what happens when the state, 
trying to be non-committal, undertakes to manage 
matters which closely touch the moral and religious 
life of the people ; matters which, according to their 
very essence, are absolutely inseparable from ethics 
and religion. 

State Control and Public Anarchy 

There are two special reasons why this problem 
will grow more and more acute. In the first place, 
so long as the state did not concern itself with 
matters outside defence, finance and a regulation of 
the merely external arrangement of life, it could 
easily maintain neutrality. But it is more and more 
occupying itself, at the present time, with more 
intimate affairs that cannot be radically treated 
without taking up some definite standpoint. 
Secondly, public opinion is itself becoming increas- 
ingly divided on all ethical and rehgious matters. 
And with the disappearance of public solidarity in 

R.E. L 



146 RUDOLF EUCKEN : 

this sphere, the state will be less and less able to 
find easy compromises that will satisfy its subjects. 
It would be easy, for example, to make marriage 
laws in a country where all the people were Protest- 
ants, or where they were all Catholics, or where they 
were all materialists. But what marriage laws will 
satisfy a people part Catholic, part Protestant, part 
materialist, and part fifty other shades of belief ? 

The Problem of Eugenics 

Or to take another question, and one which may 
soon become very urgent, in what fashion and in 
accordance with what principles is a neutral state 
to tackle the problem of eugenics ? For this is a 
matter which cannot be approached without raising 
the deepest issues and provoking violent cleavages 
of opinion. Even in the very mild form of the 
Mental Deficiency Bill the eugenic question has 
already brought forth a volume of feeling of the 
most extraordinary intensity. (Cf. also the opposi- 
tion of the rehgious bodies in the United States to 
the revolting practices which certain states have 
legalised in the name of eugenics.) The moment the 
state, acting as a secular body, makes even a first 
attempt to legislate upon this matter, it will inevit- 
ably find itself confronted with ethical problems 
which it will be impossible to solve upon merely 
utilitarian lines ; for, in the absence of a clear, 
positive ideal of life, how can there be any adequate 
settlement of such profound questions as that of the 
ideal type of man towards which we should breed, 
or that of the precise point at which the state ceases 



HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE 147 

to have rights over an individual personality ? And 
the utihtarian philosophy which is the only basis of 
the secular state can never give us such an ideal. 



The Dilemma of the Modern State 

It would appear that the modern state is about to 
impale itself upon the horns of a dilemma. The 
Governments of Western Europe have already taken 
it upon themselves to act towards their citizens as 
formative agents and to determine, to a very im- 
portant extent, along what lines the mental and 
moral life of the community shall develop ; and 
from this task they cannot now %\ithdraw. And 
this pedagogical activity on the part of the state 
demands, if it is to be exercised really effectively, 
and is not to end in chaos, that the state should 
occupy some definite ethical and rehgious position. 
Yet the state is committed to neutrality ! To put 
the matter in a shghtly different light, the state 
is coming, more and more, to play the part which 
was formerly played by the Church (the thorough- 
going socialist state would be virtually identical 
with the Church). At the same time the state 
wishes to remain non-religious. The men and 
women of to-day are becoming increasingly 
subject to a vast, omnipotent organisation, over- 
looking and controlling their entire existence, from 
the cradle to the grave, their education, their con- 
ditions of employment, their health, their amuse- 
ments, their mental food, and even their domestic 
Ufe; and yet this gigantic power is to base itself 

L 2 



148 RUDOLF EUCKEN 

solely upon a utilitarian foundation, while rejecting, 
on principle, every positive, spiritual view of life. 

In view of Eucken's eloquent and weighty protest 
against the soul-destroying influence of utilitarianism, 
I will leave the reader to judge of the seriousness of 
the problem to which, in this brief note, I have 
endeavoured to draw his attention. 



CHAPTER X 

INDIVIDUALISM 

The Modern World lacks a Central Truth 

It would be difficult for any thinking man 
to blind himself to the fact that the spiritual 
life of to-day (using the phrase in its widest 
sense) is in a condition of disintegration, due 
to the lack of any central and uniting truth. 
Upon this favourable soil there flourishes, 
with ever-increasing vigour, a luxuriant growth 
of intellectual and spiritual individualism, 
which spreads ever wider and wider, and seems 
to be leading to an anarchy in which each 
isolated person will have his or her own 
religion, philosophy and morality, and in 
which there will be no assured values and no 
positive truth. The principle of individual 
freedom is being carried to an extreme which 
is subversive of all stable civilisation. Personal 
liberty of thought alone, apart from the 
recognition of any absolute truth, must finally 
result in a complete vagueness and lack of 
definition. It tends, indeed, to destroy all 



150 RUDOLF EUCKEN: 

systematic thought : for thought itself cannot 
be unified and made universally valid if it be 
divorced from all objective truth. As Socrates 
endeavoured to teach, the real function of 
thought is to be more than individual and 
subjective ; it is to discover what is universal, 
and if it cannot do that, it is ephemeral. 

For many years, definite religion, in any 
shape or form, has been losing its power over 
the masses in all the more civilised countries. 
Speaking of the men of England, the Bishop of 
Birmingham says : '' their religious opinions 
are in complete chaos " ; while Mr. C. F. G. 
Masterman, referring to the ethical and 
religious structure around which our civilisa- 
tion has been built up, writes (in his book The 
Condition of England) : " The edifice collapses 
slowly and in silence. No one can tell, at any 
definite moment, how far the disintegrating 
process has gone.'' 

The Rapid Growth of Individualism 

Of those who are thus falling away from the 
traditional ethical and religious beliefs, very 
few become converted to any clear modern 
philosophy of life or enter the fold of any 
new religious community. It is true that some 
become socialists in the full and almost 



HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE 151 

religious sense of the term, while some go to 
swell the ranks of the Theosophists or Christian 
Scientists ; but these form a very small per- 
centage of the body of people we are consider- 
ing, and there can be no doubt that the great 
mass merely fall back upon their individual 
reason and lose all connection not only with 
religion but with any philosophy of life as a 
whole — they do not even become materialists, 
in the sense that they consciously adopt the 
scientific creed of modern materialism. It 
would probably not be any exaggeration to 
say that individualism (whether held con- 
sciously or unconsciously) is the real (if not the 
avowed) position of far more than half the 
people standing outside the churches in 
England to-day — as well as of no incon- 
siderable number of those who stand inside. 
It may even be said that individualism is 
rampant within the socialist movement itself 
— in a certain sense socialism is in fact a 
development of individualism.^ 

* The Socialist as Individualist. — To state that socialism 
(in a philosophic and not an economic sense) is itself a develop- 
ment of individualism may seem no more than a foolish paradox ; 
but the statement contains a kernel of undoubted truth. The 
socialist of to-day is, in perhaps a large majority of cases, a 
man who is at heart a pure individualist. It is not his intention 
to submit to any truth higher than his own subjective opinion. 
He may support the socialist movement from economic motives, 
or merely because he is " agin' the government " ; but his 



152 RUDOLF EUCKEN: 

Looking at the matter from Benjamin 
Kidd's standpoint, we must consider indi- 
vidualism as the symptom of a decadent 
civilisation ; for it represents that '' kata- 
bolic '' process, that breaking-down of the 
social synthesis, that liberation of the self- 
interested intellect, which is the antithesis of 
healthy, constructive growth (the " anabolic '' 
process). 

Representing, as he does, the plea for a 
universally valid philosophy of life, Eucken 
is naturally to be found in the sharpest 
possible opposition to this tendency of thought 
— if indeed we may describe as a tendency of 
thought that which ultimately involves the 
disruption of all genuine thought. He calls 
our attention, in the first place, to the sub- 
entire mental and moral attitude is that of the schismatist, 
the man who would make himself the measure of all things, 
the autonomous intellectualist. Principal P. T. Forsyth has 
very truly observed : " Is it not the misfortune of many socialists 
that they are socialist (as many Christians are humanist) on 
individual grounds which destroy both socialism and. humanism ? 
The socialism has not leavened their intellect or tempered their 
will. They are still incorrigibly critical, aggressive, unconquered, 
atomist. They love putting men right more than they love 
loving them. Their sympathies, indeed, are of the twentieth 
century, but their mind represents the thin rationalism of the 
eighteenth century, or the ideal rationalism of the nineteenth — • 
in either case being intellectualist still, individualist still. They 
are socialist largely because of an individualist reaction against 
tradition and the order represented by tradition. . . ." — The 
Principle of Authority, pp. 313-14. 



HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE 153 

jectivity into which the individual must fall 
when he thus cuts himself loose from any 
positive Weltanschauung. A superficial exami- 
nation might even find this subjectivity advan- 
tageous. It imparts to life fluidity and 
freedom. On p. 366 of Alain Currents we read, 
in a description of the individualistic point of 
view : — 

'' Life appears to be dependent upon nothing 
outside itself, and with this freedom it seems to 
become finer, more delicate, and more intimate than 
in any other form. The concept of truth; too, loses 
its customary difficulty and rigidity. For hence- 
forth only that reckons as true which is experienced 
by the soul of the indi\4dual, and experienced, more- 
over, in the present. Thus the concept of a single 
truth gives way to that of innumerable truths. 
Every man has now his own truth." 

There is a casting off of old bonds and 
customs, a venturing forth into the unknown, 
a boldness in experiment and a keenness in 
criticism. The individual demands the ''right 
of self-development " ; the opportunity for 
an unfettered expansion of his specific nature, 
without regard to estabhshed conventions, or 
even moral law. It is believed that life will 
thus become richer and more spontaneous. 



154 RUDOLF EUCKEN : 

Individualism not True Independence 

This subjectivity, however, can never pro- 
vide a proper basis for civihsation. For, as 
Eucken explains : '' The individual of im- 
mediate existence — and he alone is in question 
— is neither independent nor self-contained " ; 
in reality the modern individualist is indulging 
an illusion of independence. It is true that he 
may have shaken off the traditional autho- 
rities, but he has not in this way attained 
freedom. The empirical individual is deter- 
mined on every hand by heredity, environ- 
ment and education. However much the 
individualist may assert himself against his 
environment, he still remains overpoweringly 
influenced by it ; even when he takes pleasure, 
as is so often the case, in acting and thinking 
in opposition to his environment, his course 
is still prescribed from without, he does not 
manifest any real independence. The man 
who most prides himself on his intellectual 
independence is often, in reality, the very 
person most subject to circumstance, fashion, 
and the intellectual whim of the moment. 

The Disintegrating Effect of Individualism 

In thus cutting itself loose from the idea of 
positive and super-individual truth, this trend 



HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE 155 

of thought is logically led to utter emptiness. 
It must deprive life of all clear ideals, of all 
solidarity, of all normative concepts. It must 
leave us without any system of values, and 
without any goal to inspire the work of educa- 
tion. If carried out with true consequence, 
this tendency would result in the entire dis* 
solution of all human society. A striking 
example of the disintegrating effect of indi- 
vidualism is afforded by its influence upon 
language. The breaking down of the tradi- 
tional systems of values gives rise to a remark- 
able ambiguity in the use of terms, and this 
extends even to the commonest words in the 
language. Countless terms in ordinary daily 
use are gradually losing their clear significance. 
Such a phrase as : " He is a wise, dutiful and 
patriotic citizen,'' if spoken to twenty different 
people, would probably convey a different 
meaning to each of them ! To a Theosophist 
the word " wise " would suggest something 
utterly different from what it would convey, 
say, to a Roman Catholic, a Primitive Metho- 
dist , or a socialist ; similarly with such terms as 
'' dutiful " and '' patriotic." Or consider, as 
a further example, the statement '' the people 
of Liverpool are more moral than they used 
to be/' which is to-day absolutely meaningless, 



156 RUDOLF EUCKEN : 

because there is no generally accepted concept 
of morality. It must not be supposed that 
language has always been thus vague. Not 
many years ago the English people, as a whole, 
were sufficiently united in their general view 
of life, and there was a sufficiently firm stan- 
dard of values, for such statements as the above 
to have produced quite a definite impression. 
Terms like " dutiful '' or " moral " could then 
have been employed without any ambiguity, 
for there was an almost universal acceptance 
of an ethical background of conviction, of 
which such terms were the outward expression. 
What is very obvious in the case of such out- 
standing examples as these applies, in reality, 
to all words which involve any sort of valua- 
tion. Language is simply a means by which 
one person communicates to another an idea 
which he has formed. If there was no com- 
munity of ideas, there could be no language. 
If each individual saw the world in a way 
quite peculiar to himself, there would be no 
possibility of communication between one 
person and another (this is seen in a striking 
way in the case of colour-bHnd persons, who 
use terms in such a way as entirely to mislead 
others). That there can be communication 
with regard to the objects of the external 



HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE 157 

world is due to the fact that they give rise in 
the human consciousness to a common world 
of ideas. Human beings are so constructed 
that the idea formed in A/s mind when he 
looks at a sheep is the same as that which 
arises in B.'s mind when he performs the same 
operation. It is this community of ideas 
which allows of human intercourse. And it 
is no less essential in the world of abstractions, 
and in connection with terms involving values, 
than it is in respect of external objects. The 
very existence of a proper speech depends 
ultimately upon the presence of a common 
thought-world, which must be based upon a 
groundwork of common convictions implying 
a system of values. But it is precisely this 
necessary groundwork of general convictions 
which is being undermined by present-day 
individualism. In abandoning the idea of a 
universally valid truth, this tendency destroys 
the sole basis upon which human culture and 
civilisation can possibly rest. 

The strength of modern individualism lies 
in its valuable criticism of the existing systems 
and not in its own constructive power, for it is 
entirely incapable of imparting to life any con- 
tent whatever. As we read in Main Currents 
(p- 371) • " P^^^ individualism and sub- 



158 RUDOLF EUCKEN : 

jectivism is preserved from unbearable empti- 
ness only by being continually supplemented/' 
Even those who believe themselves to have 
cast off all reliance upon traditional religion 
and philosophy usually draw unconsciously 
upon its thought-world, and are more depen- 
dent than they know upon that very world of 
spiritual life which they have rejected (this is 
well put in Nietzsche's essay on David Strauss, 
where it is shown that although Strauss cast 
away the Christian metaphysic, he still lived 
in a world saturated with its influences). 
There is only one thing needed to reduce 
individualism to an impossibility, and that is 
that it should develop its own consequences to 
the full. 

Nietzsche and his Significance 

In the teaching of Nietzsche, we have a more 
or less systematic attempt , on the part of a 
man of profound earnestness and rare genius, 
to effect a thorough-going rejection of every 
species of religious and moral authority, and 
to carry the theory of intellectual and moral 
individualism to its logical extreme. It is 
for this reason that he stands out as the most 
significant figure of the end of the nineteenth 
century. He alone had the courage and the 



HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE 159 

insight to draw the full conclusions of the 
modern, autonomous, non-Christian view of 
life. In the doctrine of the superman we 
have the crystallised quintessence of the great 
modern principle of '' self-realisation " : as 
Eucken says, Nietzsche's cry was : " Let the 
individual exalt his own life and make the 
realisation of this his own supreme end/' The 
Nietzschean philosophy is an exposure of the 
hideousness and futiHty of individualism. A 
seeker after truth, and a man of the most 
determined intellectual honesty, it remains 
profoundly tragical that Nietzsche should 
have so misunderstood Christianity as to 
travel the path he did. What he did not and 
could not see was that the very moral and 
social values which he so scornfully rejected 
are in reality indispensable to the individual, 
even from the standpoint alone of his self- 
realisation. It was a grotesque error on his 
part to suppose that the strong man and the 
forerunner of the superman is he who turns 
his back upon pity, sympathy, obedience and 
brotherhood. Such a man is not superhuman, 
but subhuman. Christian humility is not, as 
Nietzsche thought, the weakness of the slave, 
but rather the gentleness of the giant, the 
magnanimity of the conqueror. 



i6o RUDOLF EUCKEN: 

The Value of Individualism 

In pursuance of his usual method, Eucken 
not only criticises this phenomenon of modern 
thought, but does full justice to the germ of 
truth which it contains. He makes it clear 
that the motive power of this tendency is the 
craving for spiritual freedom and a fuller 
development of personality. '' The social 
type of civilisation treats the individual as a 
mere cog in its great machine '' ; it uses him 
for its own purposes, suppresses his indi- 
viduality, and produces a monotonous, '' dead- 
level " type of life. This is fiercely resented, 
more especially by persons of powerful per- 
sonality ; and thus we get a reaction in the 
direction of individualism, a reaction which, 
although the expression of a justifiable feeling, 
has unfortunately developed along mistaken 
lines. 

Metaphysics Indispensable 

In its rejection of all metaphysics, in its 
refusal to accept the idea of a universally valid 
truth, individualism cuts away the ground 
from under its own feet. Individual life 
cannot really estabHsh itself, or effectively 
assert itself over against oppressive social 
influences, unless it rest upon some more stable 



HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE i6i 

foundation than that afforded by a mere 
isolated subjectivism ; to find his own true 
personality and his own deepest strength, the 
individual must come into contact with a 
spiritual Hfe higher than his own mentality, he 
must lay hold of a truth which is imperative 
and universal. 

What is demanded, in order that the 
individualism of to-day should be overcome, 
is not least a complete reversal of attitude on 
the part of the individual. Instead of placing 
himself and his own immediate reason in the 
centre of the universe, he must criticise him- 
self, with his limitations and subjectivity, in 
the light of a superior truth. The modern 
man is ready enough to employ his critical 
faculties upon the external world. He criti- 
cises tradition, he performs analysis in the 
scientific world, he is trained to accept nothing 
that cannot be proved. It only remains that 
he should learn to criticise himself. 



F. W, Forster as a Critic of Individualism 

Individualism has had no severer and more 
penetrating critic than F. W. Forster, who, 
after explaining that this tendency is correct 
in its basic principle that a truth can have no 

R.E. M 



i62 RUDOLF EUCKEN : 

value unless it be the inward property of the 
individual, goes on to say : — 

'' But the erroneous deduction is made that 
nothing must be recognised as true except that 
which is capable of immediate comprehension. In 
this way the individual as he is, is made the measure 
of all things. He is delivered up, bound hand and 
foot, to his own subjectivity and one-si dedness. 
... In my opinion the problem is to be solved 
along the following hues. It is certain that no mere 
outward subjection to an authoritative truth can 
have any real value ; we must seek with our whole 
power to comprehend it inwardly, to grasp its 
deepest content. But, on the other hand, the highest 
truth cannot be understood in the same facile way 
as can the vulgar wisdom of the hour. If we were 
able to grasp it without effort, how could it elevate 
us ? It would then be on our own level, would 
confirm our own incomplete point of view, and 
would never lead us to a comprehensive view of the 
whole. He who wishes, with genuine earnestness, 
to learn what is rehgious truth, must begin with 
a realisation of the fact that this truth will not 
be an echo of his imperfect wisdom. It is much 
more likely, on the contrary, to be in opposition to 
all his habits of thought, to dissipate all his cherished 
illusions, to raze to the ground the house of folly in 
which he has so long dwelled, to upset the tables of 
the money-lenders, to reverse the wisdom of the 
scribes, and to glorify the simplicity of the child ! 
Yet the man of to-day will try to fathom this 
sublime truth with his everyday reason. And when 



HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE 163 

he is not successful (and that immediately) he 
declares the truth, in the name of his ' intellectual 
conscience/ to be a fiction. No : those alone can 
understand and can grow beyond themselves, who 
have first thoroughly realised their own need for 
higher guidance. Reverence is the one indispensable 
condition of liberation." {Autoritai und Freiheit, 
p. 56.) 



Socialism and Individualism 

The Reconciliation of these two Aspects of 
Spiritual Life 

We thus reach the conclusion that neither 
the merely social nor the merely individual 
construction of life is in itself satisfactory. 
At the same time, as Eucken puts it {Main 
Currents y p. 374), '' only the most deplorable 
obtuseness can attempt a direct compromise 
between the two, a division of life into the 
social and the individual.'' The task which 
lies before us is to overcome the antithesis by 
raising the level of life. There must be '' a 
transition from a merely human culture, to 
an essential and spiritual culture capable of 
embracing the contrast.'' 

The precise meaning of this elevation of 
life may not at first be obvious. Eucken's 

M 2 



i64 RUDOLF EUCKEN : 

position in this respect, as in others, demands 
for its comprehension a clear understanding 
of the concept of spiritual life. It must be 
remembered that this life is the basic reality 
of all being, and that the social and individual 
systems are but partial expressions of this 
fundamental reality : — 

" Society and the individual are necessary aspects 
and modes of appearance of spiritual life ; indi- 
viduals are essential to its originality, society to its 
consolidation. Both society and the individual, 
however, draw their power and truth not from 
themselves but from the spiritual relationships 
which surround them.'* — Main Currents, p. 374. 

Man is called upon so to deepen and 
spiritualise his life that he is able to rise above 
the merely human and utilitarian level upon 
which the opposition between society and the 
individual is felt to exist. The acceptance of 
this solution depends, of course, entirely, upon 
the recognition of a spiritual truth superior 
to the contrasts and divisions of the natural 
plane. On a basis of humanism or naturalism 
no such solution could be attempted. 

The real opposition is not that between 
socialism and individualism (which are both 
necessary, and, when rightly placed in a 



HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE 165 

spiritual view of life as a whole, not incom- 
patible), hut that between spirit and nature. 
The difficulty in modern civilisation is that we 
do not possess a philosophy of life overcoming 
the antithesis between spirit and nature. 



CHAPTER XI 

EDUCATION 

Introductory 

At the centre of Rudolf Eucken's philo- 
sophy, as we have seen, lies the firm belief 
that what man really needs is not so much a 
new environment or a new intellectual system 
as a new life. No thinker is more thoroughly 
convinced that there can be no real progress 
and no true elevation of man save through an 
inward re-birth. A mere re-arrangement of 
life, taking the natural man as he is, and 
building upon that foundation, can never 
prove adequate. Humanity must endeavour 
with persistent activity to appropriate the 
indwelling spiritual life, and to remould 
civilisation in accordance with the. norms of 
this life. 

Eucken's Influence upon Education 
It is sufficiently obvious that such a position 
as Eucken's carries with it important educa- 
tional consequences ; and in Germany no less 



RUDOLF EUCKEN 167 

than five works have been pubHshed deaHng 
more or less directly with his teaching in its 
relation to the problems of pedagogy.^ Speak- 
ing very broadly, we may say that the influ- 
ence of activism operates in two main direc- 
tions ; in the first place it works towards a 
construction of educational work upon a 
positive spiritual basis rather than upon any 
Rousseau-like theory of '' natural develop- 
ment '' such as is now so popular, or upon any 
social-utilitarian groundwork ; and in the 
second place it adds powerfully to the already 
growing reaction against intellectualism. 



Modern Doubt Injurious to Education 

The spirit of uncertainty which permeates 
the civilised world at the present day makes 
its influence felt in the home, the school, and 
the college hardly less than in the churches. 



^ German references. — O. Kastner : Sozialpadagogik u. 
Neuidealismus (pub. Roth u. Schuncke) ; O. Braun : Rudolf 
Eucken's Philosophie u. das Bildungsproblem (pub. Eckardt) ; 
G. Budde : Versuch einer prinzipiellen Begrilndung der Pdda- 
gogik der hoheren Kndbenschulen auf Rudolf Etccken's Philosophie 
(pub. Beyer u. Sohne) ; P. Oldendorfi : Hohere Schule u, 
Geisteshultur mit Beziehung auf die Lehrerbildiing (pub. as 
above) ; and, by the same author and with the same pubhsher, 
Gfiistesleben : Gedanken zur Umbildung unsere innere Kultur, 



i68 RUDOLF EUCKEN : 

While there is no lack of educational interest 
and energy, modern culture seems unable to 
provide any authoritative and positive con- 
ception of life in place of the old ideals and 
beliefs which have so largely passed away. 
The educational world is thus left in such a 
condition of doubt that it becomes rather a 
field for theory and experiment than a sphere 
in which characters are formed who will be 
able to exercise a constructive influence upon 
the development of human culture and civili- 
sation. It is being felt that the problems of 
education must depend ultimately for their 
solution upon the wider issues raised by 
ethics, philosophy, and religion. All the 
endless talk and discussion at innumerable 
meetings and conferences cannot deafen us 
to the common-sense truth that, after all, we 
cannot bring up our children in the way they 
should go unless we ourselves know our own 
position with regard to the great eternal 
questions. The modern plan of allowing the 
child to develop freely along his own lines, 
while the educator refrains as far as possible 
from shaping his charge's mind, does not in 
reality evade this central difficulty, however 
much it may appear to do so ; for it is entirely 
beyond the power of any parent or teacher to 



HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE 169 

avoid moulding a child's mind in a thousand 
unconscious ways, even if all direct moral and 
religious instruction be scrupulously avoided. 
Moreover, what is unsaid may be as formative 
as what is said. A parent who refrains from 
imparting to a child any definite moral guid- 
ance may exercise, precisely through his 
omissions, an influence as decisive as that of 
the most dogmatic authority. It can well be 
maintained, too, that in actuality no child 
does develop along his '' own lines " ; every 
child is necessarily born into some specific 
environment and breathes some particular 
atmosphere, and it is these influences, operat- 
ing, perhaps, before any conscious instruction 
commences, which more especially determine 
the lines along which future development will 
take place. And who can say to what extent 
the deepest beliefs of the parents or teachers 
will be responsible for these subtle yet all- 
important factors ? There is no doubt that 
the educational world will come more and 
more to realise the truth of Eucken's conten- 
tion that its activities are at the present 
moment in the utmost danger of proving 
ineffective, through the absence of a '' securely 
established conviction concerning life as a 
whole." 



170 RUDOLF EUCKEN: 

Neutral Education 

It is true that Eucken has not, as yet, 
dealt explicitly to any great extent with 
educational problems, but much may be 
inferred from the general principles of his 
philosophy. Of great interest to us, for 
example, is the question whether, as is now so 
frequently maintained, education can be put 
upon a neutral basis, that is a basis free from 
definite metaphysical conviction. Since the 
first object of education must be the develop- 
ment of moral character, this is practically 
equivalent to the question : Is morality 
independent of metaphysics and religion ? 
Upon the latter point, Eucken leaves us in no 
doubt as to his position. On p. 389 of Main 
Currents we read : — 

" No matter from what side we regard it, morality 
involves the demand for a new world. It brings 
with it a reversal of the first appearance of things, 
and is therefore metaphysical. Hence by having 
recourse to morality, we do not rid ourselves of 
metaphysics. If we are really earnest in keeping 
morality free from all metaphysics, we unavoidably 
reduce it to a state of lamentable superficiality." 

Education demands a Spiritual Basis 
It is in the very essence of activism that 
it should work against all attempts to base 



HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE 171 

education, and especially moral education, 
solely upon any utilitarian foundation (train- 
ing for ''good citizenship,'' ''social duty," 
and so forth), since it involves a protest, on 
principle, against mere '' this-worldliness," 
against every sort of humanistic civilisation.^ 
According to our philosopher, the true mean- 
ing of morality is the re-birth of the individual 
into a new world of real values. There is, 
therefore, an indissoluble connection between 
morality and religion. 

Education and Naturalism 

The pedagogical consequences of Eucken's 
philosophy are more particularly bound up 
with his view of magi's nature. If man be 
regarded as a purely material being and his 
soul as a mere product of natural growth, 
education must direct itself towards the 
development of natural faculties alone ; its 
highest aim is now the harmonious adjustment 
of these faculties to the environment and to 
society in general. Here is no recognition of 
an inner depth within man's soul, of a struggle 
between the lower and the higher man. There 

1 The fundamental antithesis between activism and any kind 
of social-utiHtarian education is dealt with at length by 
O. Kastner {Sozialpadagogik u. Neuidealismus). 



172 RUDOLF EUCKEN : 

remains no room for any suggestion of the 
ancient Christian conflict between spirit and 
flesh. Here is no truth higher than that 
revealed by sensuous perception. In my 
opinion, not the least valuable of the influences 
of activism, in its contact with the educational 
world, will be its counteraction of this natural- 
istic tendency, which exerts at the present 
time an enormous influence (more in the home 
perhaps than in the school), and is responsible, 
in particular, for that cult of personality, in 
the egoistic and superficial sense of the term, 
which is the exact opposite of a true realisa- 
tion of personal values. Many scores of 
thousands of English parents are to-day 
disastrously misled in their whole treatment 
of their offspring by the all too plausible 
theories of this school. The child, they are 
told, is to be compared to a bud, and needs 
but warmth and encouragement in order to 
unfold the beauties which lie hidden within. 
Allow him to grow up in freedom, to follow 
his individual inclination, to pick out the line 
of least resistance, and his personality will 
expand and blossom like a rose in a sunny 
garden. Thus, it is said, will he realise to the 
full his own inner being. How inimitable is 
the ignorance of human nature revealed in 



HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE 173 

such doctrines as these ! Those who would 
lead us along these paths are blind to man's 
inherent weaknesses, to his miserable insta- 
bility, to the tragic contrasts concealed within 
his breast, to the strange commingling in his 
personality of the divine and the animal. 
They have no eyes for the all-important dis- 
tinction between spirit and nature, between 
the higher and lower stages of reality. In 
opposition to this weak naturalism Eucken 
stands for a recognition and overcoming of the 
traditional antithesis in man of nature and 
spirit. The problem of education depends in a 
peculiar degree upon our attitude towards this 
antithesis, and nothing can be more injurious 
to the work of character-training than a failure 
to perceive its existence and essential import- 
ance. 

True and False Personality 

The apostles of the naturalistic tendency 
have made the fatal mistake of accepting a 
false concept of personality. They conceive 
of personal realisation as being an expansion 
of the individual on the natural level. Closing 
their eyes to the necessity for self-discipline 
and to the conflict within the individual 
between the higher and the lower self, they 



174 RUDOLF EUCKEN : 

entirely fail to produce that permeation of 
nature by the spirit, that awakening of the 
inner man, which is the triumph of education. 
But if we hold, with Eucken, that man is a 
being living in the world of nature and yet, in 
his essence, a partaker in a higher spiritual 
world, the idea of personality, as we have 
already seen, takes on an entirely different 
significance. A determined rejection of the 
values of the natural level and an active 
struggle to seize the spiritual reality, is the 
indispensable preliminary to the development 
of personality. It is the first stage of self- 
realisation. There must be an elevation 
above the egoistic position. The highest 
development of self demands the forgetfulness 
of self. As Goethe said : Stirh und werde! ('' Die 
and develop ! ''). " We are concerned,'' 
writes our philosopher, " not with the develop- 
ment or adornment of the natural self, but 
with the gaining of a new self.'' 

The Need for a Principle of Selection 

In Life's Basis Eucken draws our attention 
to the overwhelming wealth of subjects with 
which the educator of to-day is confronted. 
English, French, German, Latin, Greek, 
mathematics, physics, chemistry, history, geo- 



HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE 175 

graphy, art, music, handwork (in several 
forms), gardening, games, military training, 
and finally moral and religious instruction — 
all these, and possibly other subjects, are 
looked upon as practically essential. And 
how absolutely impossible it is that all these 
can be adequately taught ! ^ To make a 
proper selection and determine what is of 
primary and what of secondary value, we 
require some definite central principles by 
which to guide ourselves. Unfortunately, as 
Eucken says, '' we do not possess enough life 
of our own of a definite character to be able to 
test and sort, to clarify and deepen, that which 
is presented to us." 

Authority and Discipline 
C>n p. 359 of Main Currents Eucken deals 
very briefly with one of the chief dangers 
which at present threatens the development 
of our young people, namely, the ever- 
increasing tendency to reject all authority 
and discipline : — 

" ' Hard ' and ' soft ' periods are apt to alternate ; 
to-day ' softness ' is undoubtedly predominant and 
tends to give rise to the idea that the weak are good 

1 Particularly when, as Eucken deplores, our schools are 
staffed with underpaid and overdriven teachers, and money can 
be found for any purpose other than that of raising the salaries 
of the staff ! 



176 RUDOLF EUCKEN : 

and the strong bad, and that it is the duty of the 
latter to give way to the former the moment there 
is a conflict of interests. Thus there is a widespread 
modem tendency to take sides with the child against 
the parent, with the pupil against the teacher, and 
in general with those in subordination against those 
in authority, as if all order and all discipline were a 
mere demonstration of selfishness and brutality." 

Nietzsche, it may be mentioned in passing, 
was driven to his glorification of power and 
aristocracy largely through his intense disgust 
with the loss of positive values which he per- 
ceived to ensue from this weak *' levelling " ; 
and in spite of his many aberrations, his 
message is of inestimable value as an antidote 
to the invertebrate humanitarianism with 
which we are now deluged. This '' softness '' 
and this failure to recognise the value of 
discipline is, of course, closely connected with 
the individualistic tendency to which we have 
already drawn attention ; it follows, indeed, 
from the general subjectivism and lack of 
definite belief which is characteristic of the 
life of to-day ; for the existence of a clear, 
positive ideal has always carried with it, as a 
logical corollary, the conviction that the 
natural man needs a severe discipline and a 
purification from what is merely individual 
and subjective. Where personality is not 



HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE 177 

distinguished from individuality, there can be 
no reahsation of the need for discipHne. But 
those who understand that personality signi- 
fies the triumph of the spirit over nature will 
not be slow to perceive that laxity and indis- 
cipline in home and school provides a soil 
which is in the highest degree unfavourable 
to the growth of all genuine personality. In 
some dim, sub-conscious way children them- 
selves realise this truth, and, as is well known, 
resent the absence of a firm hand ; ^ some- 
where deep down in the centre of the child's 
being dwells the knowledge that the undisci- 
plined flesh is the deadliest foe of the spirit. 
The '' spoiling " of children, which is one of 
the greatest and most rapidly growing evils 
of Anglo-Saxon civilisation, affords a most 
striking example of the close connection 
between metaphysics and daily life ; for it is 
due, at the bottom, to a f orgetfulness of man's 
dual nature. 

Self' development 
It is one of the calamities of a society 
impregnated with the doctrines of a shallow 

^ As in the case of a little boy (known to the author) who, 
after a long spell of naughtiness while on a visit to his grand- 
mother, was well whipped (for the first time in his hfe), and 
soon afterwards came to her and said : *' You know you mustn't 
mind having punished me, Granny, because in my opinion you 
ought to have done it long before ! " 

R.E. N 



178 RUDOLF EUCKEN : 

individualism to have lost sight of the value 
of authority and discipline for the self- 
development of the individual. The greatest 
thinkers of all ages have agreed that it is 
precisely through a willing obedience to what 
is outside the limits of the petty ego that the 
individual begins to transcend himself, to 
enter into a life larger than the narrow circle 
of his own natural interests, to learn from the 
accumulated experiences of humanity, and to 
win real freedom — as distinct from the mere 
licence of the undisciplined self. We are in 
danger of forgetting Carlyle's noble words : — 

" True is it that, in these days, man can do 
almost all things, only not obey. True likewise that 
whoso cannot obey cannot be free, still less bear 
rule ; he that is the inferior of nothing can be the 
superior of nothing, the equal of nothing.'' ^ 

Professor F. W. Forster of Munich, in his 
important educational works, has dealt in the 
most convincing fashion with the whole prob- 
lem of discipline, and his utterances throw an 
interesting light on Eucken's view of human 

^ The reader will perhaps be interested to know that, while this 
work was in the press, Eucken consented to become a Vice- 
President of the Duty and Discipline Movement (117, Victoria 
street, London, S.W.), an organization which seeks to inculcate 
the ideals of duty and discipline in home and school. 



HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE 179 

nature and his concept of personality ; for 
example, Forster writes (in School and Cha- 
racter) : — 

Freedom and Personality 

" Human nature contains such remarkable con- 
trasts that the freedom of one part is bound up with 
the subjection of another. Which part then is to 
receive freedom ? ... It is of supreme importance 
to distinguish, clearly and accurately, between 
true and false freedom. . . . The root error of 
many modern tendencies is the confusion of true 
personal freedom with mere individual licence, 
of the higher with the lower self. The disciples of 
the ' new education ' begin with quite a correct idea 
— namely, that the compulsory forcing of children 
into a mould leaves their personality undeveloped, 
and even injuriously affects it. They do not perceive 
that the laxity of their own methods is even more 
dangerous. The true centre of personality of a 
human being is in his spiritual life, and can be 
developed only in so far as the spirit is trained to 
mastery over the whole lower nature. This en- 
thronement of the spirit is not to be obtained 
without severe struggle ; a true personaUty develops 
precisely by the control of mere individual desires. 
The more the lower self is granted freedom, the more 
hopeless does the development of personality become. 
... It is a revelation of the most deplorable 
superficiality to suppose that the elimination of 
obedience and restraint sets the individual free for 
higher development.'' 

N 2 



i8o RUDOLF EUCKEN: 

There is but one sure road to the over- 
coming of the antithesis between authority 
and Hberty, and that is to labour for the 
general recognition of the fact that it is 
through an obedience to a truth and a law 
higher than himself that the individual 
realises that very liberty in the name of which 
he has so mistakenly rejected all authority. 
In this task a most important aid will be 
found in Eucken's view of the spiritual life as at 
once an objective reality and an indwelling 
power, a compulsion upon the subjective ego 
and the centre of the true personality. 

Intellect and Personality 

Goethe once wrote : '' Whatever liberates 
our intelligence, without at the same time 
giving us self-control, is fatal." This saying, 
brief as it is, carries with it almost a whole 
philosophy of education. It is the expression 
of a truth which is to-day greatly neglected, 
but to the reconsideration of which Eucken's 
philosophy should powerfully contribute. 
Modern education, in only too many cases, 
gives rise to a type of man whose intellect is 
not restrained, complemented and balanced 
by other portions of his nature. In such 



HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE i8i 

cases the intellect attains a kind of false 
independence ; it works out of harmony with 
the higher qualities of the soul. The educa- 
tion of to-day, instead of promoting, as it 
should, individual and social wholeness, simply 
acts disruptively by turning out large masses 
of young people whose intellects have been 
aroused to action, but who have not learned 
that deeper wisdom expressed by Pascal, when 
he said that the highest use of the intellect was 
to discover its own limitations, and who are 
therefore sufficiently intelligent to be critical 
of all the moral and spiritual fare which may 
be offered to them, but not well-balanced 
enough to understand the profound need of 
humanity for all that lies above and beyond 
the mere individual reason. The intellect can 
do nothing for man unless it subserves the 
development of spiritual life and personality ; 
and Eucken will have performed a notable 
service to the cause of true education if he, in 
some measure, compels a realisation of the 
sadly neglected fact that (as he himself says) 
intellectual work does not become really 
positive and productive until it is associated 
with a great view of life as a whole, until the 
mere individual reason has found its right 
place in the world of spiritual values and is 



i82 RUDOLF EUCKEN 

itself guided and impelled by eternal and 
super-individual forces. 

Modern Education gives no Positive Philosophy 
of Life 

Much of the restlessness, discontent and 
spiritual uncertainty of the age is traceable to 
the failure of an educational system divorced 
from any truly authoritative, positive philo- 
sophy to furnish those who have been brought 
up within it with a valid view of life as a whole, 
and to ensure that inward, spiritual training 
which is the absolutely indispensable com- 
plement of rational development. The 
absence of this inward training may, if not 
remedied, prove disastrous to the entire future 
of Western civilisation. For it alone renders 
possible that transference of the centre of 
gravity of life from the natural to the spiritual 
plane, which is itself the only real purpose of 
all civilisation. 



CHAPTER XII 

RELIGION ^ 

The Need of a Re-birth 

The problem of nature and spirit runs like a 
thread through the whole of Eucken's thought ; 
and we shall find that the religious problem, 
too, is best approached from this point of 
view. 

The religious life, if it be truly genuine, is 
no mere development, refinement, spiritualisa- 
tion, expansion or decoration of the natural 
life. We have already seen how decisively 
Eucken rejects all those philosophies, such as 
naturalism, humanism, pragmatism, syste- 

1 This chapter does not profess to give anything more than the 
merest sketch of Eucken's theological position. The reader 
who wishes to pursue the subject is referred to the following 
literature ; — 

Rudolf Eucken's Philosophy of Life, by Professor Boyce 
Gibson ; An Interpretation of Rudolf Eucken's Philosophy , 
by Dr. Tudor Jones (a work concerned almost solely with the 
religious aspect of Activism) ; Eucken and Bergson : Their 
Significance for Christian Thought, by Mrs. E. Herman ; The 
Hibbert Journal for April, 191 2 (The Religious Philosophy of 
Rudolf Eucken, by Ba,Ton V. Hiigel) ; The Quest for April, 191 3 
(Rudolf EuQken and the Mystics, by the author of this study). 



i84 RUDOLF EUCKEN : 

matic socialism, and intellectualism, which 
tend merely to gratify or develop man as he is, 
without changing the root of his nature, 
philosophies which do not recognise a negative 
movement, a break with the first appearance 
of life. From the standpoint of activism, 
religion involves a conversion from the realm 
of sense to the spiritual world : " Verily, 
verily, I say unto thee, except a man be 
born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of 
God/' 

World-denial and World-renewal 

Professor Boyce Gibson has put the matter 
very clearly in his book, Rudolf Eucken's 
Philosophy of Life, p. 86 : — 

" Our life does not move on a single surface, but 
on two different levels at once, the levels of nature 
and of spirit. The reality of the natural level 
cannot be contested. The world as given to us 
cannot be taken away by the ascendancy of the 
spiritual. However sublimated our being may 
become, we remain, as men and women, vitally 
involved in a natural system. But this natural 
system is capable of radical improvement. To 
seek to better it in the sole light of natural ideals 
is simply to rivet more securely the fetters which 
bind us to it. What is primarily needed is not an 
improvement of its defects and discomforts, but 



HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE 185 

a reconstitution of the whole in the light of the 
values of the upper level." 

The task with which we are faced is funda- 
mentally very simple, in spite of the enormous 
difficulties with which its practical realisation 
is fraught. In the first place, the human soul 
must be quickened to the point of a realisa- 
tion of, and participation in, the superior 
world of spiritual reality which is the source of 
our being, and, in the second place, the soul 
must react upon the natural world, performing 
upon it a work of reconstitution, elevation, 
revivification. There must be a world-denial 
and a world-renewal. If there be no rejection 
of the world man will remain absorbed in an 
almost unconscious, sensuous routine ; and if 
there be no return to the world his life will be 
divided into a sterile and unpractical spiritu- 
ality and an uninspired natural existence. 
Such is the problem with which man is, in 
actuality, confronted. This is the problem 
which has been with him throughout the whole 
of history ; the Greek philosophers, the Stoics, 
the Neo-Platonists, Christianity, the modern 
idealists — all have been primarily concerned 
with its solution. It is the most fundamental 
difficulty of human life. It lies at the root 
of psychology, metaphysics, education, ethics 



i86 RUDOLF EUCKEN : 

and religion. In man's own nature, in the 
peculiarity of his dual composition, lies the 
secret of this centrality. 

Christianity Essential 

The previous sections of this study will have 
left the reader in no doubt as to the essential 
impossibility of solving this problem along the 
lines of naturalism, humanism, pragmatism, 
intellectualism or any allied systems ; and it 
is Eucken's firm conviction that Christianity 
alone offers us an adequate solution — although 
it must, at the same time, be stated that his 
interpretation of the great Western religion 
differs very widely from those views which 
have been most influential in the past. 

The Superior Depth of Christianity 

It is Christianity that offers us the deepest 
insight into the things of the spirit, and imparts 
to these the greatest depth and concreteness ; 
it is Christianity that leads man nearest to 
God:— 

" All the mistakes that have been made ought not 
to prevent us from recognising that it was in Chris- 
tianity that the movement towards a self-existent 
and active spirituahty was first carried out on any 
large scale, and that it was rehgion, in the ethical 



HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE 187 

form which it assumes in Christianity, that first led 
to the recognition of such a Being/' — The Life of 
the Spirit y p. 51. 

The peculiar force of the Western religion is 
derived, says Eucken, from the unfathomable 
personal depths to which it alone holds the 
key — profundities inaccessible to all merely 
speculative and intellectual religions : it 
'' transfers the centre of gravity of life from 
the intellectual and cosmic to what is ethical 
and personal . ' ' The secret of the incomparable 
personal warmth and intimacy of Christianity 
is to be sought, and this goes without saying, 
in the life of its Founder. In this connection 
a forcible passage from The Truth of Religion 
(p. 360) will throw much light upon Eucken's 
attitude towards this aspect of religion : — 

Eucken on the Life of Christ 

'' Here we find a human life of the most homely 
and simple kind, passed in a remote corner of the 
world, little heeded by his contemporaries, and, after 
a short blossoming life, cruelly put to death. And 
yet, this life had an energy of spirit which filled it to 
the brim ; it had a standard which has transformed 
human existence to its very root ; it has made 
inadequate what hitherto seemed to bring entire 
happiness ; it has set limits to all petty natural 
culture; it has stamped as frivolity all absorption 



i88 RUDOLF EUCKEN : 

in the mere pleasures of life, and has reduced the 
whole prior circle of man to the mere world of sense. 
Such a valuation holds us fast and refuses to be 
weakened by us when all the dogmas and usages of 
the Church are detected as merely human organisa- 
tions. That life of Jesus establishes evermore a 
tribunal over the world ; and the majesty of such 
an effective bar of judgment supersedes all the 
development of external power." 

Christianity, Eucken affirms, signifies for 
mankind the revelation of a new world of 
spiritual reality and eternal values ; a world, 
moreover, with which he can enter into the 
most intimate personal contact : — 

" the infinite distance between the perfect Spirit 
and wholly imperfect man does not prevent an 
intimate relation and a communication of the fulness 
of the divine life. Such a communication from 
being to being gives rise to a new kind of life, a 
kingdom of love and faith, a transformation of 
existence into pure inwardness, a new world of 
spiritual goods.'* — The Prob, of H. Life, p. 135. 

Hinduism and Buddhism 
It is true that other religions, for example 
Hinduism and Buddhism, have, in an inferior 
degree, elevated man and brought him into 
touch with a spiritual world. But in the case 
of the Indian religions we cannot but be con- 
scious of an aloofness, a coldness, an abstract 



HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE 189 

intellectualism, an atmosphere of imper- 
sonality, and a repulsive indifference to the 
wants and sufferings of humanity, which, in 
spite of all that is noble and sublime in this 
type of belief, compels us to realise the 
unmistakably warmer, richer and more fruit- 
ful character of Christian spirituality ; it 
would be impossible that the tendency of 
thought which inspired such verses as the 
following {Bhagavad-Gttd, Bk. XIL) could 
ever come to exert upon humanity an in- 
fluence even approaching that of the great 
Christian teachers : — 

"... Who troubleth not his kind, 
And is not troubled by them ; clear of wrath, 
Living too high for gladness, grief, or fear, 
That man I love ! Who, dwelling quiet-eyed. 
Stainless, serene, well-balanced, unperplexed, 
Working with Me, yet from all works detached, 
That man I love ! Who fixed in faith on Me, 
Dotes upon none, scorns none ; rejoices not. 
And grieves not, letting good or evil hap 
Light when it will, and when it will depart, 
That man I love ! . . . " 

In its real essence, and when uninfluenced 
by Western tendencies, Indian thought stands 
for a spirituality which would escape from life. 
The highest good is here the avoidance of 



190 RUDOLF EUCKEN: 

suffering.^ In an inward and psychological 
sense, Buddhism represents the exact anti- 
thesis of Christianity. Here is no enrichment 
of life, no revelation of a raised significance 
in human existence, a significance which may 
repay suffering, but rather, as Evelyn Under- 
hill says, an attempt '' towards the extinction 
of all that bears the character of life '' {The 
Mystic Way, p. 26). It is precisely where the 
Eastern reHgions fail that Christianity has 
most triumphantly succeeded. 

The Redemptive Power of Christianity 

The Western religion not only develops the 
richest spiritual life, but it brings this life to 
bear upon the realm of nature with a vivify- 
ing, redemptive and reconstructive power : — 

'' Finite existence is not degraded by it to an 
unreal appearance, but rather immeasurably exalted 
in significance, inasmuch as it teaches that the eternal 
enters into the temporal and there reveals its inner- 
most depths, inasmuch as it holds that a union of 
the divine and the human begins even in this world." 
—The Prob. ofH. Life, p. 133. 

^ In this connection it is interesting to note that modern 
European civiHsation, in its increasing attachment to this 
negative principle (see p. 130), is pursuing a path which is essen- 
tially Buddhistic rather than Christian ; the prevailing modern 
ideal of life is not the creation of positive values, but the elimina- 
tion of suffering. 



HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE 191 

Eucken's Trend towards the Personal 

A very considerable part in determining 
Eucken's attitude towards religion is played 
by his personalism, ethicism and anti-intel- 
lectualism. In his treatment of Christianity 
he lays stress upon its active and personal side, 
even to the neglect, as many will feel, of its 
more mystical, contemplative and intellectual 
aspects. This reaction against the impersonal, 
abstract and bloodless type of religion which 
has too long been offered to the public, is, 
however, very warmly to be welcomed, 
whatever may be its limitations ; and in his 
systematic and scientific argument for a 
recognition of the world-creating and world- 
embracing spiritual energy as an independent, 
self-active, purposive, personal life (and not as 
a mere physical force) , Eucken has gone far to 
make positive religion a real possibility to 
men and women reared in the atmosphere of 
the modern world. 

The Problem of Personality 

Our philosopher believes, in the first place, 
that human personality itself cannot be 
explained as a summation of separate quan- 
tities derived from the natural plane. Man, 



192 RUDOLF EUCKEN: 

as a personal being, is not built up from 
totally impersonal matter. The idea that he 
can be so built up involves assumptions of the 
most extraordinary and preposterous descrip- 
tion ; it is as if one believed that if first one 
billiard ball and then another, and another, 
and another, and another, were laid down 
upon the table, at a certain point, when a 
sufficient number of balls were present, they 
would combine together, acquire life and 
movement, and begin to play a game of 
billiards among themselves ! The mere juxta- 
position of physical and chemical quantities in 
the shape of the human body could never of 
itself give rise to quantities in another cate- 
gory, to all those marvellous attributes which 
are manifested in human personality. But 
there exists within the life-process a central 
activity, an " immanent unity," a unity not 
parallel with the separate manifestations of 
life, but within them. And it is in so far as 
man is able to grasp this indwelling spiritual 
life that he becomes a personality. The 
realisation of personality is not accomplished 
without effort and self-activity, involving an 
elevation of the individual above the level of 
sense to that of spiritual reality. This spiri- 
tual life, this immanent unity, works through 



HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE 193 

the whole, and it is only through contact with 
the fundamental unity that separate indi- 
viduals are able to realise their own being. 
But there is no unity without personality ; 
and neither the universe nor our own lives 
would have any meaning apart from a uni- 
versal personal being. True personality is 
neither a development of individuality nor a 
dissipation of the individual through absorp- 
tion in a cosmic being. There is a contact of 
being with being. There is an outgoing of 
the spirit into nature, that nature may itself 
become spiritualised and personalised — a pro- 
cess which does not take place without an 
overcoming of the inertia and resistance of 
the natural level through self-activity on the 
part of the individual. 

The Body of Christianity to he distinguished 
from its Clothing 

But let us draw a little nearer to the question 
of Eucken's attitude towards Christianity. It 
is necessary, he tells us, to distinguish between 
the substance of Christianity and its existential 
form ; the former is timeless, but the latter 
alters from age to age. The value of religion 
to us will depend upon our ability to penetrate 
to the eternal core which lies behind the 

R.E* O 



194 RUDOLF EUCKEN : 

temporal wrapping. But there are two great 
dangers to be guarded against ; on the one 
hand, in stripping off the wrapping, we may 
tear away something of the core ; and, on the 
other, in our anxiety to preserve the eternal 
element, we may smother it in externals. In 
our consideration of this problem, he urges, 
we must always bear in mind that religion is 
rooted in life and not in intellectual beHef. 
The eternal truth is attained and retained not 
by any act of the intellect, but through its 
translation into life. If we are to understand 
Christianity, what happened in Jesus must 
happen to some degree in ourselves. There 
must be a transforming spiritual experience. 

The Present State of the Churches Unsatisfactory 

Eucken is of opinion that the churches, as 
a whole, do not present a view of life which is 
compatible with the legitimate demands of 
the age ; and he regards the prevailing 
ecclesiastical types of Christianity in the light 
of existential forms, which, while containing 
a nucleus of imperishable reality, are not 
adapted to the present stage of human 
development. He believes that the supreme 
task of the age is a positive reconstruction of 
religion, a new setting of Christianity which 



HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE 195 

shall avoid both the dangers indicated in the 
foregoing paragraph. Eucken would himself 
influence Christian thought in such wise that, 
while holding fast to the idea of transcendence, 
it should express itself more than has hitherto 
been the case in the direction of self-activity 
and a vital permeation of our entire civilisa- 
tion. Christianity should provide the modern 
world with a comprehensive unity. We must 
be on our guard that it does not sink to the 
level of rationalism or humanism. In the face 
of all the materialism of the day, it must never 
cease to remind men that spirit is primary and 
matter secondary. The churches must make a 
firm stand against the brutalising poverty, and 
no less against the soul-destroying ease and 
comfort of the age. 

Modern Protestant Tendencies criticised 

While Catholicism tends to force life into a 
mould, thereby endangering its spontaneity 
and originality, Protestantism, we are told, is 
too often lacking in the authority and con- 
fidence without which a church cannot impress 
the age. On the Protestant side there is a 
tendency to smooth away the opposition which 
must exist between a Christian church and an 
age largely given over to individuaHsm and 

o 2 



196 RUDOLF EUCKEN : 

materialism ; there is an easy-going adapta- 
bility and a lack of that ready self-sacrifice 
which ensues when spiritual claims occupy 
the undisputed first place. 

Eucken's Supreme Service to the Age 

It will, I think, be generally acknowledged 
that the supreme service which Eucken has 
rendered to the present age consists in his 
having again made it possible for men and 
women to accept the reality and supremacy 
of the spiritual and Divine. To those who 
have been brought up in the so-called realistic 
thought of the nineteenth century he brings a 
complete reversal of values. He has made 
materialism seem out of date. It must be 
admitted, however, that his treatment of the 
problems of religious psychology and Christian 
theology is by no means so convincing as his 
defence of the spiritual in its purely philo- 
sophical aspect ; and religious psychologists 
and theologians (both orthodox and liberal) 
have been among Eucken's severest critics. 

Eucken's View of the Person of Christ 

Starting with the acceptance of Jesus as a 
real historical personality whose life inspired 



HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE 197 

the gospel narrative, Eucken explains that, 
while regarding Him as more than a mere 
teacher, he cannot accept either the traditional 
view of the Divinity of Christ, or that view 
which would establish Him as supreme Lord 
and Master without ranking Him as more than 
an exceptionally inspired man. In Can We 
still be Christians ? we read : — 

" We therefore no longer see in the figure of 
Jesus the normative and universally valid type of 
aU human life, but merely an incomparable indi- 
viduality which cannot be directly imitated. . . . 
Between man and God there is no intermediate form 
of being for us, for we cannot sink back into the old 
cult of heroes. If Jesus, therefore, is not God, if 
Christ is not the second Person in the Trinity, then 
He is man ; not a man like any average man among 
ourselves, but still man. We can honour Him as a 
leader, a hero, a martyr ; but we cannot directly 
bind ourselves to Him, or root ourselves in Him. 
We cannot submit to Him unconditionally. Still less 
can we make Him the centre of a cult. To do so 
would be, from our point of view, nothing else than 
an intolerable deification of a human being." 

The re-birth which plays such an important 
r61e in the activistic philosophy comes to us 
(as Mrs. Herman writes in Eucken and Berg- 
son, p. Ill) : — 

" diffused throughout the world-historical movement 
and not f ocussed in one point within that movement ; 



igS RUDOLF EUCKEN : 

and the individual reaches it through a spiritual 
immediacy, not through an actual and personal 
mediation/' 



Affinities with Traditional Christianity 

At the same time, however, Eucken has 
many striking points of affinity with orthodox 
Christian teaching : for example, his recogni- 
tion of the reality of Divine love and justice, 
his deep realisation of the gravity of sin, his 
rejection of all unredeemed human culture, 
and his conviction that true human freedom 
proceeds from membership of a Divine King- 
dom and dependence upon God. 



Critical Remarks 

Even were the necessary competence mine, 
it would be quite out of the question, merely 
at the close of a short study such as this, to 
enter into any adequate criticism of the great 
Jena thinker's religious position ; for this 
would be a task demanding the widest know- 
ledge and the most careful treatment. The 
following remarks may, however, serve to 
suggest lines of thought which will stimulate 



HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE 199 

the reader to a deeper study of the whole 
matter. 

The Treatment of Psychology Defective 

With regard to Eucken's defective treat- 
ment of psychology, his critics speak with one 
voice. All his works breathe a distrust of the 
psychological method which is greatly to be 
deplored. There can be no doubt that 
activism as a philosophy of life — and more 
especially as a religious philosophy — suffers 
severely from a lack of psychological deepen- 
ing, a deficiency which is not, however, 
inherent in its basic structure, and is therefore 
capable of being remedied with advantage to 
the whole. Professor Boyce Gibson, Mrs. 
Herman, Evelyn Underbill and others have 
complained of Eucken's comparative neglect, 
in his religious works, of the experiential 
standpoint, and have pointed out the weak- 
nesses which this neglect has brought in its 
train. The problems of belief tend to be 
regarded from the speculative and cosmic 
aspect, and not from the point of view of the 
believer himself and his own experience. In 
this way injustice is done to those religious 
factors which, while being inaccessible to the 
speculative philosopher, play a vital part in 



200 RUDOLF EUCKEN: 

the actual soul-life of the individual. It is 
thus, perhaps, that we may explain the fact 
that Eucken assigns no place to prayer, 
meditation or worship. 

Difficulties relating to the Concept of the 
Spiritual Life 

An almost equal unanimity of criticism 
prevails with regard to the question of man's 
realisation and appropriation of the spiritual 
life. Granting that this life is a reality, in 
what manner, precisely, is its realisation to be 
achieved ? We are told that the spiritual life 
is the normative basis of morality ; but in 
what fashion are these norms to become clear 
to us and to enter into our life ? It is true 
that Eucken has, to some extent, answered 
these questions. But the very fact that his 
readers and critics continue to ask them 
points to some inadequacy on this side. 

The Person of Christ and the Spiritual Life — 
Objections and Difficulties 

Critics of an orthodox tendency have not 
been slow to suggest that the antithesis 
between spirit and nature, which plays such 
a central part in the Jena philosopher's 



HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE 201 

thought, is not in reality overcome by a view 
of the spiritual life which leaves to humanity, 
working apparently through action and in- 
tuition, the task of appropriating this life ; 
and that a view of Christ's person and 
authority, by which He was made the mediator 
between man and the spiritual world, would 
have given the concept of the spiritual life the 
clearness, concreteness and normative force 
in which it is at present lacking. In their 
opinion, since, as Eucken himself says, person- 
ality is the highest form of spirituality, a 
philosophy based upon the idea of an inde- 
pendent and absolute spiritual life would gain 
immeasurably in power and actuality if it 
recognised the manifestation of this life in a 
personal form. The spiritual life would then 
lose its vagueness, and become possessed of a 
definite vital centre. The gulf between spirit 
and nature would be bridged. From this 
point of view it is even asserted that activism 
would itself become more logical and complete 
if it were so developed as to include the idea 
of the God-Man. 

Substance and Form in Christianity 

Readers of this chapter will, very probably, 
already have asked themselves the question : 



202 RUDOLF EUCKEN: 

How does Eucken propose to distinguish 
between the substance of Christianity and its 
existential form ? There cannot fail to be 
endless conflict as to what is permanent and 
essential in the Western religion, and what is 
temporary and merely accessory. And in 
view of the central importance of this dis- 
tinction between substance and form, it is to 
be regretted that Eucken has not found it 
possible to answer it in a clearer and more 
satisfactory fashion. 



Activism not an Intellectual System 

But such critical considerations (which, 
moreover, do not injure the basis of activism) 
must not cause us to belittle the magnitude of 
the service which Eucken has rendered to the 
modern world. He has offered the age not a 
pedantic intellectual system, but a philo- 
sophy of life resting upon a broad and deep 
basis of historical, scientific and philosophical 
work, a philosophy which would enrich our 
life with all that modern science and thought 
can give us, while linking it fast with the great 
truths whose roots are buried deep in the past. 
Here we find a scheme of reality so well 
founded and so broadly built as to be capable 



HIS PHILOSOPHY AND INFLUENCE 203 

of almost indefinite expansion and, if necessary, 
modification. Activism is no system which 
claims to press the whole of truth into a mould. 
Its plasticity is one of its most notable quali- 
ties. Rather is it to be compared to a house 
the general framework of which is sufficiently 
sohd to permit of successive tenants making 
their own alterations and additions, while the 
building still retains its original character. 
And a civilisation like that of to-da}^, largely 
disintegrated by individualism and self-centred 
intellectualism, stands in urgent need of such a 
dwelling-place. Our philosopher perceives 
that only through the recognition of an 
independent spiritual life can the chaos of 
modern opinions be made to give way to a 
satisfying and comprehensive synthesis of life. 

Conclusion : Eucken as a Philosopher of Life 

Eucken has not come forward to offer men 
a fresh set of intellectual opinions. His object 
is to influence their lives. '' The intellectual 
conflict," he says, "is an affair of outposts ; 
the real conflict is between ways of living.'' 
He is deeply convinced that the peoples of 
to-day, devoting themselves predominantly 
to the pursuit of material things, intent upon 
the improvement of their environment, and 



204 RUDOLF EUCKEN 

intoxicated by the triumphs of technical 
science, have increasingly lost touch with the 
central realities without which their lives, 
however comfortable, can have no meaning or 
value. In a word, the interests of the modem 
world are peripheral rather than central. It 
is his aim to lead men to a new understanding 
of the reality and \ital significance of the 
spiritual world. In a world of centrifugal 
tendencies he would act as a centripetal force. 
He seeks to stamp upon our minds the fact, 
so often forgotten, that the whole structure 
of human life and ci\ilisation rests upon a 
spiritual basis. The old sjTitheses of hfe, 
satisfactory in their da}' and generation, have 
largely lost their hold over the people, and 
there is a great need for a wider construction. 
The modem world, says Eucken, will make 
no genuine progress in the absence of a com- 
prehensive sjTithesis of reahty to serve as the 
rallying point for the scattered and di\ided 
forces of humanity, a synthesis which shall 
carr}^ with it a positive philosophy of life. 



INDEX 



Activism, Eucken's philosophy 

as, 32 
Aristotle, xvii, xviii, xxviii 
Art and philosophy, 114 — 116 
Augustine, St., xxii, xxviii, 79 



Bain, A., 69 

Bergson, Henri, xiii, 56, 58, 60, 
81,98 
and the intellect, 74 f . 
Birth-rate, decline of the, 100 

—105, 134 
Body and mind, 61 f. 
Boutroux, E., xxviii, 56, 58 
Browning, Robert, 133 
Buddhism and Hinduism, 188 

— 190 



Caird, E., 90 

Campbell, R. J., and the 

modern man, 54 — ^^ 
Carlyle, 116, 178 
Chesterton, G. K., 46 — 47, 116, 

125, 127 
Christ, Eucken and the Person 
of, 187 — 188, 196 — 197, 200 
201 
Christianity, xx, xxi, xxviii, 
183 f. 
and civilisation, 117 
and the intellect, 78, 86 

and the spiritual life, 49 
Churches, condition of the, 194 

— 196 
Civilisation, 16 — 17, 33 — 34, 

89 f., 152, 203 — 204 
Comfort, the ideal of, 130 f. 



Comte, A., 122 
Conscience, 23 — 24 
Consciousness, prolDlem of, 65 f. 
Culture, problem of, 114 — 116 



Democracy and society, 134 f. 
Democrat, Eucken as a, 139 f. 
Democritus, xiv 
Discipline and education, 175 

—178 
Dostoevsky, 116 
Driesch, H., 56 — 58 



Education, 166 f, 

question in England, 145 
secular or neutral, 170 — 
171 
Emerson, R. W., 8$ 
Empedocles, xiv, 17 
Erasmus, 87 
Ethics and reason, 83 

and society, 89 f . 
Eugenics {also see Population), 
146 



Feminism, 112, 126 — 127 

Fichte, I., XXV, xxviii 

Forster, F. W., 

and the intellect, 82 

and individualism, 161 — 

162 
and personality, 178 — 179 

Forsyth, P. T., 152 



Gibson, Boyce, 30, 77, 119, 
183 — 184, 199 



206 



INDEX 



Goethe, 96, 174, 180 
Greek thought, xiii f. 
Green, T. H., 69 



Haeckel, E., 70 
Hall, Stanley, 98 
Hegel, XXV, xxvi, xxviii, 79 — 

80, 122 
Heraclites, xiii 
Herman, Mrs., 183, 197, 199 
Hinduism and Buddhism, 188 

— 190 
Hoffding, H., 69 
Hiigel, Baron von, xxviii, 183 
Huxley, 63 



Ibsen, 116 

Indian thought, 188 — 190 

Individual and society, 97 — 98, 
III — 112, 123 — 126 

Individualism, 149 f. 

and language, 155— 157 
and Socialism, 163 — 164 

Individuality in living beings, 
58—59 

Instinct and intellect, 75-— 77 

Intellect, place of the, 74 f. 

Intellectualism, 10, 73, 74 f. 
and activism, 202 — 203 
and personality, 180 — 182 
evil results of, 8^ 

Intuition, 77 — 80 



Jones, Tudor, 183 



Kant, xxv, xxviii 
Kerner, A., 58 
Key, Ellen, 112 
Kidd, B., on religion and 
society, 45, 83—84, 94 f., 152 
Knowledge, problem of, 19 — 20 
Krause, 2 



Language and individualism, 
155—157 



Lassalle, 122 
Leibniz, xxviii 
Life, nature of, 56 f. 
Lodge, Oliver, 56 — 57 
Logic, 23—24 
Lotze, 2 
Luther, Martin, 79, 87 

Mallock, W. H., 138 — 139 
Man and civilisation, 105 f. 

and naturalism, 17, 19 f. 

and spiritual life, 20 f., 

45 f., 73 

as a creative worker, 50 
—52 

of to-day, 54 — 55 

nature of, 19 f. 
Marriage question, 145 — 146 
Marx, Karl, 122 
Masterman, C. F. G., iii, 150 
Materialism, xxvi, xxvii, 52 f. 

reaction against, 35 

and psychology, 62 f. 
Matter and spirit, 53 f. 
Mazzini, 134, 142 — 143 
McDougall, XV, 56 — 57, 69 
Melancthon, xxiii 
Metaphysics 

and civilisation, 119 

and individualism, 160 — 
161 
Mill, J. S., 89 
Mnd and body, 61 f. 
Monism, 15, 71 — 72 

Nationalities, Eucken and 

the little, 144 
Naturalism, 9 f. 

and education, 171 — 173 
Nietzsche, 112, 116, 176 

significance of, 158 — 159 
Norstrom, Vitalis, 118 

" Ought, judgment of," 20 

— 21 
Overpressure of modern life, 

105—109 

Pantheism, 49 — 30, 73 



INDEX 



207 



Pascal, 181 

Paul, St., xxviii 

Personality, 49 — 50 

and education, 173 f. 
and freedom, 179 — 180 
and intellect, 180 — 182 
and religion, 191 — 193 

Plato, xiv f., xxviii 

Plotinus, xviii f., xxvii, xxviii, 
79 

Population question, 100 — 105, 

134 
Poverty, problem of, 140 f. 
Pragmatism, 35—36, 46—47 
Pringle-Pattison, xxviii 
Protagoras, xiv 
Psychology, 61 f., 199 
Psycho-physical parallelism, 

69—71 
Puritanism in U.S.A., 102 

Reason and ethics, 83 
Reformation, the, xxiii, 87 
Religion, 183 f. 

and society, 96 f. 

and the State, 144 f. Also 
see Christianity. 
Renouvier, 56 
Renter, W., 2 
Roux, W., 56 
Royce, xxviii 
Ruskin, 116 

SCHELLING, XXV 

Schopenhauer, 80 
Self-development, 177 — 180 
Shaw, G. Bernard, 104, 112, 116 
Siebeck, xxviii 
Social-Democratic movement, 

134 f. 
Socialism, 120 f. 

and individualism, 163 — 

164 
State, dangers of, 134 f. 
Society and religion, 96 f. Also 

see Civilisation. 
Spencer, Herbert, 66, 69, 79, 129 
Spinoza, xxiv, xxv, xxviii, 79, 
122 



Spiritual life, the, 15 f., 19 f., 

25 f., 203 
in analogy, 39 f . 
arguments for, 26 — 27 
stages of the, 29 — 30 
as fact, 25 — 26 
as reality, 28 
as unifying force, 27 
Eucken's critics on the, 

200 
and Christianity, 200 — 

201 
and civilisation, 91 f., 203 
and the intellect, 32 — 33, 

81—82, 84—85 
and man, 20 f., 45 f., 71 

—73 
and personality, 179, 191 f. 
and psychology, 70 — 71 
and truth, 33 f. 
and the world, 37 f. 
State, problem of the secular, 

144 f. 
Subjectivism, 112 — 113 
Suffering, elimination of, 130 

—134 
Syntagma, the, 12 — 13, 92 f. 

Tolstoy, 116, 133 
Trendelenburg, A., 2 
Troltsch, xxviii 
Truth, idea of, 22 — 23 

problem of, 33 — 36, 81 
—82 
Tyndall, 66 

Underhill, Evelyn, 190, 199 
Utilitarianism, 129 f. Also see 
Civilisation. 

Vitalism, 35 f. 

Whetham, W. C. D., and C. D,, 

103 
Windelband, xxviii 
Women's movement, the, 112, 

126 — 127 
Wundt, 69 



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